Just Off the Key of Reason
by nicalyse
Summary: "If he doesn't want to pick between us, he shouldn't have to." Santana/Finn/Rachel. Three-parter. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This story was inspired by a prompt at the Santana Lopez Drabble Meme on LJ, and to say that it got away from me is a bit of an understatement. This does deal with an open relationship, so if that doesn't work for you, now is the time to walk away! It's intended to be read all at once, but I broke it into three chapters to offer an opportunity for a break if you decide you need one. I'd love to hear what you think!

* * *

><p>Finn has always had the same problem when it comes to girls. He has a really hard time choosing between them, because even when he's in love with a girl (the way he is with Rachel), it's like there's always someone else sitting there being incredible and fucking things up in his head.<p>

Santana isn't doing anything wrong. She isn't _doing_ anything, really.

They worked together on an assignment for glee club, and for the first time in...well, since he's known her, probably, he realized that Santana isn't just this scary girl with sharp words for everyone in her life. They actually managed to have a couple of decent conversations while they were working together that week, and sure, Santana still snarked at him, but it didn't have the same cruelty that it did before.

(Finn has a theory that if Santana _really_ hates you, she just ignores your existence altogether. Making fun of you is like, a twisted expression of affection for her.)

He was completely surprised when his phone woke him up at like, one in the morning one Friday and he saw Santana's name on the display.

She was crying when he answered. "Could you come pick me up?" she asked. She sounded a little breathless, like she'd been crying even harder before he picked up. "I'm at Mason Anders' house, and I need to not be here."

"Are you drunk?" he asked, even though he was already sitting up and pushing the covers back.

"Does it fucking matter?" she snapped before taking a shuddering breath. "Yes, Finn. I'm drunk and I need to not be here any more."

"Okay. I'm on my way." He didn't think his mom would stop him if he explained that he was picking up a friend who'd had too much to drink if either she or Burt even woke up before he got out of the house. That wasn't likely though; they're both pretty heavy sleepers.

It was freezing outside, and raining, which made Finn wish he'd grabbed his coat instead of just pulling on a hoodie with his jeans. He blasted the heat in his truck all the way across town in an effort to cut through the damp chill.

Then he'd turned onto Mason's street and saw Santana sitting out on the curb in the rain, not wearing a coat and with her hair totally soaked.

"Why are you sitting outside?" he asked as soon as she opened the door, reaching behind the seat for the blanket that his mom insists that he keep back there in case of emergencies.

She slammed the door shut and glared at him. "Can you just drive and not ask questions?" she snapped.

He resisted the urge to throw the fleece blanket at her and held it out instead, watching as she took it and used one end to squeeze some of the water out of her hair before draping the part that was still dry over her bare legs. He pulled his sweatshirt over his head and held it out towards her. "Here."

She pressed her lips together before taking the shirt. "Do you mind if I..." She trailed off, gesturing at her own soaking wet shirt, and his cheeks burned when he realized that she was asking if he minded if she took it off.

"Yeah." He made himself look out the windshield at the street when she started pulling the fabric over her head.

"Thanks," she murmured after a moment, which he took as his cue to look back at her. She looked really small wearing his hoodie. "Can you please take me home?"

He didn't say anything as he pulled away from the curb, and neither did she. In fact, she stayed silent for the entire ten minutes it took to get to her place. He cut the engine when he pulled into the driveway, not wanting to wake anyone inside. He was surprised that Santana just sat there instead of jumping out of the truck immediately.

"Brittany decided to give Artie another chance," she murmured after a moment. It struck Finn as strange (strangely telling, maybe) that she used the guy's real name instead of some kind of insult. She let out a heavy breath and was shaking her head when he looked over at her. "After this summer, I just thought..." She trailed off and took another breath. "I don't know what I thought."

"Are you gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Do I have a choice?"

He watched her for a moment and saw the silent tears that were slipping down her cheeks. He wondered if she would be crying in front of him at all if she hadn't been drinking. "Well, yeah, I guess you do." She looked over at him. "You could be totally miserable. Or you could find something else that makes you happy."

She just stared at him, breathing and swallowing every few seconds like she was trying to make herself stop crying. "Thanks for the ride, Finn," she finally said. Maybe he was crazy, but he thought she looked like she wanted to say something else.

Before he could say anything, she was out of the truck and running up the path to the front porch.

He'd told Rachel about picking Santana up the next afternoon, though he didn't mention anything about the crying or Brittany and Artie being back together. (Everyone who hadn't already heard found out about that at school on Monday anyhow.) It just didn't seem like the kind of thing Santana would want anyone to know, and Finn didn't figure that not telling Rachel made him a bad boyfriend or anything.

He'd still been surprised when Rachel leaned over at the end of the story and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips.

"Santana needs a good friend, I think," she'd said, cupping her hand around his jaw. "It's sweet of you to be there for her."

"Seriously?" he'd asked before he could stop himself. "I mean, you aren't mad?"

Her lips curved upwards. "No. I trust you."

That had been the beginning.

* * *

><p>Finn's friendship with Santana isn't like any other he's ever had. It's not like being friends with Puck or Mike or whoever because, whatever people might want to say about her attitude, Santana is definitely not a dude. It's not like trying to be friends with Quinn, who he's pretty sure still hates him at least a third of the time, and it's not like trying to be friends with Rachel, because he was in love with her for at least half the time they were trying to be <em>just friends.<em>

Santana is the first actual girl friend he's ever managed to have.

He and Santana don't usually hang out alone, though they talk on Facebook chat sometimes and they sit beside each other in their computer applications class and watch videos on YouTube. (Schools should just give up on content filters, really, because they aren't that hard to work around.) He usually ends up hanging out with Santana at parties, too, because Rachel doesn't really like to go to them and he does sometimes, and Santana has never not been at a party Finn went to.

They're all sitting together at lunch one day - and he doesn't remember when exactly the glee club started sitting together, but he really likes it - when Santana stands up abruptly from the table and stalks out of the cafeteria without saying anything to anyone. Finn's watching her go when Rachel nudges him with her elbow and nods down the table to where Brittany has literally climbed into Artie's lap and is whispering something in his ear.

"Go find her," Rachel tells him softly. "She needs a friend, Finn." She says it like a reminder, and the tone of her voice has him pushing away from the table, though he grabs his bag of Skittles to take with him. It only takes a couple of minutes to find her sitting alone in the choir room.

"Way to eat and run," he says, trying for a joke that he knows falls flat. It makes her roll her eyes, but he ignores it and crosses the room to sit next to her on the top riser. "What's up?"

"Nothing," she says, picking at the red polish on one fingernail.

"Santana."

She huffs out a breath and turns to glare at him. "You're really fucking annoying, you know that?" He just waits instead of saying anything; he knows a rhetorical question when he hears one. "Seeing her like that...I don't think Brittany loves me the way that I love her."

"That sucks," he says quietly, looking at the bag of candy in his hand. It does, too. He felt like that with Quinn sometimes, and even though he loves Rachel more than he ever loved Quinn, it doesn't erase everything that he felt before her.

"If she doesn't want to be with me, that's fine. I'm glad she just told me instead of like, fucking around." She laughs humorlessly, surprising Finn and making him look up at her. "She's always been a better person than me."

"Santana."

She snatches the Skittles from his hand roughly. "I convinced her that having sex with me when she was with Artie wasn't cheating," she says, staring at him pointedly.

Well. Finn tries to think of what Rachel would say in this situation because she's better at this stuff than he is. "So you were like, misguided," he says after a minute. "You wouldn't do that now, right?" He assumes the way that she's glaring at him, like she'd like to burn a hole through his forehead so she could watch his brain melt, means that she wouldn't. A month ago, that look would have made him want to move his chair away from hers, but he thinks he's getting used to it. "You just need time to get over it."

She just stares at him for a second. "Since when do you have all the answers, Hudson?"

The bell that signals the end of lunch rings before he can figure out how to answer her question, which is probably a good thing.

* * *

><p>The thing that people don't tell you about sex is that it really does make you feel closer to someone, which has been the best surprise about sex with Rachel so far. Like, he knew that it was going to feel awesome physically (though it's even better than he'd thought it would be after his kind of disastrous first time), but he had no idea that it was going to make him <em>feel<em> so much more for Rachel.

It's not always easy to get alone time with Rachel though. Her dads are home by 5:30 every night, and between basketball and glee rehearsals, Finn is almost always at school later than that. They have a date night once a month, but they also have a 'no boys in the house without a parent present' rule, so that isn't really helpful. His mom and Burt are home every night, too, and when they go out, Kurt is usually still around. Finn doesn't usually hate having a step-brother the way he thought he would, but when said step-brother is distracting his girl from getting naked with him...well. Yeah, he kind of hates Kurt then, and it happens way too often.

He's way too tall for them to be trying to have sex in a vehicle - his or hers - but a dude's gotta do what he's got to do, and Rachel's been giving him those _looks_ all night while they've been out. He parks his truck out on this gravel road where he and Puck sometimes go out and shoot paintball guns after they leave the movie on Saturday night. They have an hour till her curfew, and he really, really wants to make the most of it.

And, judging by the way that Rachel pulls him to the middle of the bench seat and straddles his lap, she does too.

Before he even realizes what's happening, Rachel's panties are lying on the seat next to him and her soft little hand is slipping into the front of his boxers. He doesn't even remember her unzipping his jeans, but fuck it.

She lets out an amazing little breath when slides his hand up the inside of her thigh until his fingers brush over her pussy. "Finn," she gasps when he circles the tip of his index finger around her clit.

He groans and shifts in his seat, and it makes her hand, which definitely stopped moving when he touched her, slip against the head of his cock. "Rachel. I can't-"

She cuts him off. "I know," she says, even as she's leaning back to reach for her purse in the floorboard, because of course Rachel carries condoms in her purse.

She moans the same way she always does when she lowers herself onto him, her fingers digging into his shoulders for the few seconds she takes to adjust before she starts moving again. It's fast and a little desperate, but so good. As much as he'd like to have a bed and more than forty-five minutes, he doesn't hate the times like these.

They stay there as long as they can without risking breaking Rachel's curfew, just sitting together and talking, and Finn thinks, not for the first time, about how great it's going to be when they finally get a chance to spend a whole night together instead of having to sleep in separate beds.

He goes straight to the kitchen when he gets home. Kurt is standing at the counter making himself a cup of tea, and he gives Finn a bland look when he pulls open to fridge to see if there's anything appealing inside.

"You know, the worst thing about you and Rachel sleeping together is that I can always tell when it happened," Kurt comments, looking at Finn with a vaguely disgusted expression on his face. It could be because he's talking about sex, or maybe it's because Finn just pulled a baked chicken breast out of the fridge and took a bite.

"Whatever, dude." He slaps Kurt on the back on his way out of the kitchen, because really, who cares what Kurt thinks?

* * *

><p>The week of Christmas, Mr. Schue arranges for New Directions to go caroling at some of the local nursing homes. It's one of those things that Finn kind of loves and hates at the same time, because he knows that the residents like getting to hear them sing and that it brings some holiday spirit into the places, but nursing homes are more than a little bit depressing. He tries to just focus on the good parts though.<p>

Finn is driving out of McKinley's parking lot at the end of the day with Rachel when she starts shouting at him to stop and go back because she left a folder of sheet music sitting on top of the piano.

"Do you really need it?" Finn asks her, idling there in the middle of the parking lot.

She looks at him like he's crazy. "It's my Christmas sheet music, Finn. Of course I need it."

He can tell she's totally not impressed when he mumbles, "But you're Jewish," so he circles the truck back around towards the side entrance and doesn't argue when she asks him to go get it for her.

He's got the choir room door halfway open when he hears a not-entirely-unfamiliar moan followed by Puck's gruffly mumbled, "Fuck, Santana."

The door slams when it falls shut, but Finn is already halfway down the hall, so he doesn't worry about it or what it means for Puck and Santana.

"Where's my folder?" Rachel asks when he gets back to the truck.

"I didn't see it," he insists, hoping that he can remember to hide it somewhere when they get back to school after New Year's. If she thinks she left it on the piano, she probably did.

He doesn't really know why he doesn't tell her that he's pretty sure he just almost walked in on Puck and Santana having sex. He doesn't generally lie to Rachel, and she would understand why he didn't want to go into the room with them in there like that. He just doesn't want to bring it up. He can't stop thinking about it though, even when he and Rachel are in her basement watching _The Breakfast Club_ and snuggling together on the couch. It keeps coming into his head, a sudden unbidden memory of the way Santana's moan sounded from where he was standing in the hallway.

He finally figures it out when he gets home that night and he's half-asleep in bed.

It isn't Puck having sex with Santana that's freaking him out. It's _Santana_ having sex with Puck. Because for the last six months or whatever, Santana has been all about Brittany. She dated lots of guys before - hell, she almost dated Finn - but he was pretty sure that the Brittany thing meant that she was into girls and only girls.

Puck is definitely not a girl.

He sees her on Facebook chat a couple of days later, but instead of talking to her there, he grabs his phone and finds her name in his contact list.

"I heard you and Puck in the choir room after we went caroling," he sort of blurts out after they've greeted each other.

She makes a strangled sort of noise before she dissolves into giggles. "What exactly did you hear?" she manages.

"Uh..." Maybe what he thought he heard wasn't what he heard after all. "A moan, and he said your name. It sounded like you were..."

"Fucking," she supplies, sounding unimpressed. "Because we were. We thought everyone was gone though."

"I came back for Rachel's sheet music," he says, feeling stupid, and he can practically picture her rolling her eyes even though he knows that she and Rachel have reached some sort of peace agreement or middle ground or something. "I don't get it though."

"Um. If you and the hobbit are doing the dirty, you should get it," she says.

He ignores her little dig at Rachel because there isn't really any venom behind it, not like there used to be. "No, I mean...I thought that, after everything with Brittany, you were into girls." He says the last part quietly, because he's not really sure he's supposed to be saying it at all.

"Being into girls doesn't mean I can't be into guys, too," she points out. She lets the words hang there for a moment. "Look, it's been a while, and Puck and I have always been good together."

Finn leans back in his desk chair and rubs his hand over his face. He understands the words that she's saying, but he still feels confused. He's been used to the idea of Santana as a lesbian, but now she's telling him...what? "So, are you bi?"

She laughs quietly. "I guess. I'm not really a fan of labeling shit."

"But like...you'd have sex with a guy or a girl, and you could fall in love with...anyone."

He hears her take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I guess so. If it was the right person."

He thinks that could be really confusing, but then again, "That's kind of awesome, really. Like, no one's off limits."

"Finn." She's laughing for real then, and gasping a little, and he thinks she might sound a little teary, but then she's calling him an idiot and he isn't sure of anything about this conversation any more, really.

* * *

><p>Santana and Puck are still sleeping together when school starts again, and the way that everything has shaken down since school started, it almost feels like they've all gone back to junior year again.<p>

"Maybe I should invite Santana over for dinner with my fathers sometime," Rachel says one night. It's completely out of the blue. They're sitting in his room, and she's doing reading for her AP history class while he plays some Mario Galaxy. (Rachel hates it when he plays violent games when she's over, so he generally sticks to Mario when she's around. There are worse things, honestly, so he doesn't say anything about it.)

"Why?"

She looks at him like she's just said the most logical thing in the world and he's the crazy one for questioning her. "Being bisexual in a town like Lima has to be challenging. Maybe my dads can offer her some advice."

"You didn't want to invite her over when you thought she was a lesbian," he points out, setting down his game controller. This feels like the sort of conversation where he should actually be looking at her face instead of the TV.

Rachel looks down at her lap instead of meeting his eyes. "She and I weren't friends before," she says softly. "Our friendship now may be tentative, but since you two have become a bit closer, I feel like I could actually have that sort of conversation with her without her just becoming defensive or shutting down."

"I don't know, Rach."

"You don't think she'd be receptive?" she asks, looking at him seriously.

"I just don't think she wants to talk about it at all, and having dinner with you and your dads would be all about talking about it." It sounds kind of stupid, but he still thinks he's right.

Rachel nods. "What do you suggest I do?"

"Nothing," he answers honestly. "I really think she just wants to be left alone to figure stuff out. Santana isn't afraid to talk about something if she wants to."

Rachel leans forward so she's on her hands and knees and crawls to where he's sitting at the foot of his bed, draping her arms over his shoulders and pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. "You're right," she murmurs against his skin. "And you're a good friend."

"Thanks, babe."

Her lips move up until they're brushing against his earlobe the way he loves. "You're an even better boyfriend," she whispers against his ear. He has to bite back a groan at the way her warm breath feels. "Finn."

Screw it. He turns, slipping his arm around her waist so he can move her back up against the pillows and stretch out on top of her. "I love you."

He slips his hand up under the hem of her skirt when she's trying to answer, and the words kind of get lost in this sexy little whimper she lets out.

He doesn't mind.

* * *

><p>Finn totally expects shit to hit the fan when Brittany and Artie break up again.<p>

He sees the whole thing. Everyone does, because they have an actual fight in the middle of a glee club rehearsal.

"I don't understand why you're so mad," Brittany says, throwing her hands up. Finn doesn't either, and he's seen this whole fight. Even though they started fighting over some dance move that Brittany wants to do that Artie doesn't like for whatever reason, they aren't fighting about dancing or glee club any more. Finn doesn't know what though.

"You _never_ understand," Artie says seriously, "and this isn't me calling you stupid. You just don't get it."

Quinn, standing just in front of Finn with Sam, sucks in an audible breath.

"So explain it to me," Brittany says like it's the simplest thing in the world. Maybe it should be.

Artie shakes his head. "I can't. We're just...we're done, Brittany." Everyone watches him wheel out of the room before looking at Brittany, standing there with her eyes shining with tears.

Except Finn. He's looking at Santana. She's standing on the other side of the room, watching everything unfold with an expression on her face that Finn can't read at all.

"Let's take five, guys," Mr. Schue says, breaking the silence but none of the tension.

They all just kind of stand there for a moment, then Brittany is half-running out of the room while everyone else sort of mills around.

Finn doesn't even know what to do when Santana just moves to the back of the room and sits down with her phone. Like, shouldn't she be chasing Brittany? Isn't this the opening that she's been waiting for?

(That's how Finn felt when he realized that Jesse and Rachel were a done deal sophomore year. Like maybe he would finally have a chance with her.)

Rachel catches his eye and glances pointedly at Santana, widening her eyes when he shakes his head. He's not going to go talk to her right now, no matter how much Rachel apparently thinks he should.

Puck walks up then and asks a question about their basketball practice schedule, and Finn's so grateful to the guy for saving him that he nearly hugs him. It's one thing to talk to Santana and be friends with her, but it's another thing to walk up and ask her what's up two minutes after the girl she is (was?) in love with breaks up with her boyfriend right in front of her. He's not afraid of her any more, but he's also not stupid.

"Why didn't you talk to Santana?" Rachel demands the second they're alone after rehearsal, standing at her locker in the otherwise deserted hallway.

He shakes his head. "That isn't how she works. If she wants to talk about it, she'll bring it up, Rach."

Rachel closes her locker door and tilts her head at him. "What?" he asks when she doesn't say anything.

"You're right," she says softly. "It's nice that you two are friends now, but it's a little strange for me." She says it like she wishes it wasn't true - the fact that it's strange, he thinks - and it makes something constrict in Finn's chest. "She's lucky to have you."

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her against his chest, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. "I think I'm lucky to have you."

She tips her had back to kiss him then, her lips brushing sweetly against his the way she always does when they're out in public and she doesn't want to be inappropriate.

Even though he knows what he said is true, Finn doesn't expect Santana to show up at the garage four days later on Saturday afternoon.

He's gotten used to seeing Rachel here, to the point that he doesn't even really think that she looks out of place in her pretty dresses and nice shoes in the greasy shop. Santana being here, however, is weird. First of all, she's wearing jeans and a red sweater instead of her Cheerio uniform; he should be used to seeing her in street clothes by now - she isn't quite as attached to the Cheerio thing as she used to be - but it's always a little shock. The heels of her flat riding boots click on the concrete floor as she walks towards him, and she's got a paper cup from The Lima Bean in her hand.

"Hey," she says, standing over him where he's finishing changing the tire on a Toyota.

He glances up at her and reaches for a lug nut. "What are you doing here?"

He catches her shrug out of the corner of his eye. "When do you get off?"

"We've been kind of slow. Burt said I can cut out whenever. Probably after I finish this tire." He reaches for a tire iron to get the lug nuts started. "Why?"

"Do you have plans with Rachel?" she asks instead of answering.

"No." He sets down the tire iron and stands so he can really look at her. "What's up, Santana?"

She sighs, rolling her eyes. "My parents are gone for the weekend, and I'm already sick of being in my house alone. Brittany used to come over when they were gone, but."

"Right," Finn says, saving her from having to say that things are weird with Britt. He knows. "You wanna hang out?"

"God help me, I do."

He snorts out a laugh and nods before kneeling next to the car again. "Don't hurt yourself, Santana."

"Shut up," she orders, kicking at his toe. He knows Santana well enough by now to know that the way she's lingering, sipping her drink and watching him tighten lug nuts, means that there's something else she wants to say. He also knows that it's better to let her decide to say whatever it is instead of pushing it. "Hanging out with me isn't going to be like, a thing with Rachel, is it?" she finally asks.

"No." It's a weird question, he thinks, because it's not like they haven't hung out together before, for glee club and at parties and stuff, and Rachel has really encouraged his friendship with Santana, even after they all found out that Santana's bi. (It shouldn't make a difference either way, and he should have known that it wouldn't with Rachel, but there was always a chance that she was only okay with him being friends with Santana because she thought the girl wasn't into dudes any more.)

Santana smiles when he look up at her. "Good. Come over when you're done here."

She walks away before he can answer, leaving him shaking his head as he gets up to lower the jack so he can finish off the lug nuts.

The first thing he sees when she opens her front door is her socks, bright blue with white and yellow stripes, and he can't help grinning at them. "Shut up," she warns him.

"But they have stripes." He doesn't know why, exactly, they're funny, but they kind of are.

"They're _socks_."

He doesn't say anything else about the socks when she steps aside to let him in the house, but he doesn't stop grinning about them either.

They end up in what Santana calls the family room, sprawled out on a huge brown leather sofa and watching a _Pop Up Video_ marathon on a huge flat-screen television. He's kind of engrossed in the pop-ups on this 'NSync video (embarrassing, yeah, but Justin Timberlake is kind of awesome) when Santana finally tells him what had her coming by the garage and asking him to come hang out.

"Brittany stopped by here this morning."

He looks over at her, sitting in the corner of the sofa. She has her legs pulled up next to her, and there's a white fleece blanket patterned with red and green snowflakes draped over them. Her eyes are focused on the TV screen, but he doesn't know that she's actually seeing anything that's happening on it.

"My parents go away for the weekend every few months. It isn't a big deal, and I'm not afraid to be here by myself or anything, but Britt has been coming and staying with me since middle school. This is the first time she hasn't."

"Why did she come over?"

She finally looks at him. "To hang out, I guess. But it would have turned into more than hanging out. It always does with Britt," she says quietly. "I told her that I was busy instead of telling her the truth."

Finn asks the question before he can stop himself. "What's the truth?"

It's too much, he knows. This is the sort of thing that gets you into trouble with Santana: Trying to get her to do something that she isn't ready for, to open up more than she's willing to without being prompted, is a bad idea. His mom (and Rachel) would say that it makes her lash out, but Finn knows that it's her getting defensive but trying not to look like she's being defensive. She goes on the attack as a way to stop people from paying attention to the fact that she just almost gave something up.

He's bracing himself for the attack, for whatever insult she's going to fling at him. It catches him completely off guard when she says, "The truth is that I know we can't be together."

"Why not?"

"Because she doesn't love me like I love her," Santana whispers. "I've been in love with her for I don't even know how long, and she loves me as her best friend. It isn't the same."

Finn actually does know what it's like not to be able to look at your best friend the same way because of something he did, and even though what Santana and Brittany are going through isn't the same at all, he kind of gets it. No matter how things wind up with them, these girls are never going to be able to be best friends like they were before, just like he and Puck will never be exactly the way they were before the stuff with Quinn. And he thinks that maybe he gets what it's like to love someone and not have them feel the same way.

"I'm sorry," he says after a moment, because he doesn't know what else to say. He knows better than to compare her and Brittany to him and Puck. She blinks at him, and he wishes that he was better at reading her expressions. "I wish I could fix it for you."

She looks like she wants to laugh, but instead she just slides over on the couch a little, switching her legs to her opposite side so she's right next to him. He puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his side because it feels right. "Me too."

She stays there next to him through the rest of the boy band videos, curled up against his side and letting him run his fingers through the ends of her hair.

* * *

><p>"Do you ever think that you could fall in love with a girl?"<p>

The _what the fuck_ look on Rachel's face definitely drives home how stupidly he asked the question, but it isn't like he really thought about the wording before he asked. The question itself though, he's been thinking about for a while. Not Rachel, specifically, but people in general. He's kind of surrounded by people who aren't doing what society tells you you're "supposed" to do in terms of love: his girlfriend has two dads, his stepbrother is gay, and now he knows that one of his best friends (and when did that happen?) is bi. Finn can't imagine Kurt falling for a girl any more than he can imagine himself falling for a guy, so Santana sort of blows his mind a little bit.

Rachel's face is far more understanding when he explains all of that to her.

"I don't know," she says after a moment. She pulls her legs up and crosses them so she can turn to face him where they're sitting on the floor next to her bed. "I can appreciate an attractive woman, and I can't say that I've never been attracted to one, but I don't know that I could picture myself in a relationship with a girl."

He forces himself to focus on what she's getting at instead of fixating on the fact that his super sexy girlfriend just admitted that she's been attracted to other girls. "What do you mean?"

She's quiet for a moment. "I don't think love has anything to do with gender," she finally says, "but I can't picture myself in a relationship that didn't involve being with a man." She smiles, taking his hand and tracing the tips of her fingers over his palm.

He doesn't know exactly what he wanted to hear when he asked, but Finn likes what Rachel says.

A little later, when they've moved up onto her bed and his fingers are skimming up her ribs beneath her shirt, he finds himself asking, with his lips against her ear. "Have you ever fantasized about being with a girl?"

Her fingernails dig into his biceps almost painfully when she gasps his name, and he pulls back to look at her face, afraid that he's made her mad.

She pushes at his chest, so he rolls off of her and onto his back, sure that this is the end of his fun night. He doesn't even know what to say when she moves on top of him, straddling his hips and leaning over him to nip at his lips. "Have you ever fantasized about me with a girl?" she counters in a low voice that goes straight to his dick.

"God, Rachel."

He totally forgets that her dads are sitting downstairs watching _Mad Men_ in the den when Rachel wraps her lips around his cock, but she reminds him by reaching up his body and pressing her fingers against his lips, which is hot enough in and of itself that he has to bite back a groan.

* * *

><p>The first time Finn ever had a drink, he was thirteen. Puck had the alcohol, of course, a bottle of some Jewish wine that they finished off together over Christmas break when they were just supposed to be hanging out playing video games while Mrs. Puckerman was at work. Finn puked and Puck still brings it up every once in a while, but really, the worst part was how terrible he felt the next day, nauseous and headachey and just like shit all around.<p>

He still drinks, of course, but he still hates hangovers, so he doesn't like to let himself get _drunk_. He'd much rather drink enough to have a good time and then stop before things get out of hand.

Sometimes though, things do get out of hand.

Mrs. Puckerman takes Abby with her when she goes to visit her sister for a weekend, leaving Puck home alone with orders not to have anyone in the house while she's gone. This means, of course, that he throws a party, though he does keep it to just the glee club and a handful of other people who don't suck instead of inviting the basketball team and all the Cheerios the way he would have if he'd gotten this opportunity two years ago.

Rachel says she thinks she's getting a cold, so she stays home in an effort to avoid getting sick, which kind of sucks. He loves Rachel all the time, of course, but he really likes it when he gets her somewhere that she can really relax and let things go. The fact that she isn't around, being cute and distracting him, is probably why he lets himself get roped into a game of Fuck the Dealer during which, in fact, he gets spectacularly fucked, and not at all in the fun way. He's playing with Tina and Mike, who have a bottle of American Honey, which is much too tasty a liquor to play drinking games with, he decides, when he stands up to leave the table and nearly falls over.

He switches to water, ignoring Puck's jabs at his manhood, and chews his way through a few slices of cinnamon raisin bread that he finds in the kitchen. That gets him from 'almost sick' to just wasted, which is a huge improvement, even though he's still going to feel like shit tomorrow.

He's sitting in the living room debating whether or not he should call Rachel for a ride home since Kurt and Blaine left a couple of hours ago when Santana flops down onto the couch beside him.

"You're boring," she announces before he even gets a chance to greet her. "And I'm drunk."

"Me too."

"You should drink more," she tells him seriously. "You can drink for both of us, and then I can stop drinking. That way you'll throw up instead of me."

"You're a bitch," he says, looking at her like she's crazy. She doesn't respond, just stares at him blandly and crosses her legs. She's wearing a tight pink skirt with boots that go up past her knees. He likes it, and he wonders what it would look like if Rachel and Santana were ever to trade wardrobes.

It'd probably be pretty hot.

"I really don't want to puke tonight," he tells her.

"Me neither." She stands up and holds her hand out, looking at him expectantly. "Let's go for a walk."

"It's like, forty degrees," he says dumbly. He doesn't really want to be outside, and there's no way she's wearing enough clothes to be walking around out there.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't be a pussy, Hudson. First of all, we'll wear coats because that's what they're for, and for another, we're drunk. You don't feel cold when you're drunk."

Sound enough logic for him. "Where are we walking?"

"We'll go to my house." He looks at her dubiously; her house isn't really a comfortable walking distance away, though it's not impossibly far. She rolls her eyes again and makes a noise like he's annoying her. "Puck and I both did it all the time freshman year. It takes like, forty-five minutes."

This is a really terrible idea. "Fine."

It turns out that the route Santana takes from Puck's house to hers cuts through about seven hundred back yards. Finn is just sober enough to realize that while a small girl like her in your back yard isn't scary, a big dude like him is, so he spends a good portion of the time walking slumped over and praying that no one is looking out their windows at one o'clock on a Sunday morning.

Other than worrying about someone calling the cops on him, the walk is actually kind of fun. He doesn't know what Santana was drinking at the party, but it obviously wasn't tequila, because she's being hilarious and silly instead of crying all over him the way he's seen her do way too many times before.

Finn still remembers Santana in middle school, back before Quinn moved to Lima and swallowed up all of his attention. He'd actually had a little crush on her, even though he was too afraid to do anything about it back then. She was softer in middle school, less mean, and, he thinks, probably more open. They had a lot of the same friends - Puck, notably - but he'd never really been brave enough to take the chance and get to know her better.

Now that he has gotten to know her better, he wishes that he hadn't wasted all that time being intimidated by her. Once you get past her armor, you can see how great she really is. She's smart and talented, and when she's on your side, she'll go to the mat for you, no questions asked. After years of hoping that she wasn't going to say something horrible and mean to him on a regular basis, it's crazy that he considers her one of his best friends.

He likes being friends with Santana.

It isn't until they're walking up the front walk at her house that he realizes what a bad idea this is, coming home with her. She doesn't seem to notice the way he's hesitating, reaching into her coat pocket for her keys while the heels of her boots click on the porch steps.

"What about your parents?" he asks, whispering when she looks over her shoulder at him.

"They won't notice," she answers dismissively. "Their bedroom is at the back of the house, mine is at the front."

"Are you supposed to let guys in your room at night?"

Instead of answering his question, Santana presses her finger to her lips and pushes the door open.

(Finn thinks that means that he's not actually supposed to be here, but his other option is to call Rachel or Burt or his mom to come pick him up, which...no.)

For all the times that Finn has been to Santana's house, for parties or when they were working together for glee or whatever, he hasn't ever been in her bedroom before tonight. It's a kind of dark and moody, which suits her, and not exactly tidy either, which doesn't surprise him. It's not dirty at all, but there are clothes and shoes sort of everywhere and there's makeup and stuff scattered all over the top of the vanity. (He doesn't mean to compare her to Rachel, but he knows that Rachel's vanity table is meticulously organized to the point that Finn doesn't even really like to sit next to the thing for fear of inadvertently knocking something out of place.)

She tosses her coat over a chair that's sitting in the corner that he thinks is her dropping spot for everything when she comes through the door; he sees her Cheerios jacket and bag there along with the backpack she carries at school.

"Is somebody going to come after me with a shotgun or something if they find me here?" Finn asks once her door is closed.

She shakes her head at him, perching on the edge of her bed to unzip her boots. "They don't care," she insists, "and even if they did, they like you."

He isn't entirely convinced, but Santana tells him to take off his coat before she disappears into her ensuite with what he assumes are pajamas in her hand, and he does it.

Walking in the cold has definitely sobered him up, but Finn still feels drunk enough that he wouldn't be willing to drive or have a conversation with Burt or his mom for fear that they would figure it out and be angry. He doesn't have much of a choice but to hang out with Santana for a while unless he wants to walk back to Puck's, which he definitely does not.

He feels weird being in her room alone, so he's standing awkwardly next to her desk looking at the books she has lined up on the shelf (he's not sure he's ever seen Santana read something that wasn't for school, but apparently she does) when she comes out of the bathroom in a little tank top and a pair of silky looking dark blue pajama pants.

"We can see what's on the movie channels," she offers, standing next to the unmade bed and fussing with the linens until she's got stuff arranged so she can sit _on_ the bed instead of just crawling into it.

That's how he finds himself stretched out on Santana Lopez's bed at nearly two on a Sunday morning, half-drunk and watching some movie, the title of which he doesn't even know.

"I can't believe you walked all the way here from Puck's with me." It comes out of nowhere, but she's looking up at him and almost laughing at him.

He makes a face. "Don't be mean."

"I'm not," she insists, pushing herself up so she's leaned back against the headboard next to him. Her knee touches his thigh when she bends her leg. "It was sweet of you to go with me. Or maybe you were just drunk."

"I'm still kind of drunk," he admits, making her grin, "but I came with you because I wanted to." He shrugs and slides down a little, putting his face level with hers. "I like hanging out with you, San."

"I don't know when the hell it happened, but I like hanging out with you, too, Finn." She says it quietly, like she's confessing something illicit.

He doesn't know who leans in first, but Santana's lips are soft when they touch his, and gentler than they ever were when they kissed before. It's more than a brush of their lips together, but it's still technically chaste, even though it doesn't feel that way. It feels like...more.

"Finn." She whispers his name, her breath fanning over his lips.

Her eyes are wide, like she doesn't know what just happened any more than he does.

(He wonders, vaguely, if her heart is beating as fast as his is too.)


	2. Chapter 2

"I kissed Santana last night."

Rachel looks down between them for a second, then meets his eyes again.

"It was just a kiss."

He woke up on Santana's floor on Sunday morning covered with a purple flowery quilt with a leopard-print throw pillow under his head. His back hurt, his mouth felt like he'd eaten a bowl of sand as a midnight snack, and all he could think about was how he and Santana had kissed the night before.

He doesn't know why it happened in the first place, but he doesn't have any desire to cheat on Rachel, so one kiss was where it stopped. They didn't talk about it when Santana was driving him back to Puck's so he could get his truck; they both pretended like nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. But just because they didn't talk about it didn't mean that Finn wasn't thinking about it. As soon as he got something to eat and took a shower, he left home again, going straight to Rachel's.

"I don't understand," Rachel says quietly.

Finn tells her what happened the way that he remembers it, and even though he was a little drunk, he thinks he's pretty accurate.

"So you kissed each other."

He can't read her voice. "I think so. But I didn't like, want to do it, Rach. I didn't plan it. It just happened, and it was just one kiss, and that was all." He's talking too fast, he knows it, but he can't make himself shut up. "Please don't be mad. It didn't mean anything, so please, just...don't be mad."

He knows that he's asking a lot of her. The last time they went through something like this - when she kissed Puck - he broke up with her without a second thought. He knows that her kissing Puck was different than him kissing Santana, for a lot of reasons, but he also knows that different doesn't necessarily mean that it's better. Sure, Rachel has been encouraging his friendship with Santana, but it's not like there isn't still history between the three of them that he's just dragged back out into the open.

"Why are you telling me this, Finn?" she asks when she's been quiet for so long that he's just about to beg her to say _something_, even if she does tell him to go to hell.

He knows that he didn't have to tell her. He's pretty sure that the friendship that he has with Santana now would keep her from using this against him, even though that's exactly what she did before. He trusts her, and she's a different person now altogether. Santana probably would have kept this to herself forever if he'd asked.

"Because secrets always fuck us up," he answers honestly, wincing a little when he realizes that he slipped and swore in front of her. She hates that. "They always come back and screw everything up, and this isn't worth ruining everything we have over."

Rachel nods and looks down at her hand, picking at a loose thread on her bedspread. "I'm not mad," she finally says, and Finn exhales a breath that he didn't even realize he was holding.

He leans over and presses his lips to her temple. "Nothing like that will ever happen again," he promises, locking eyes with her. He means it; he doesn't want to cheat on her, and what happened with Santana was a one-time-only deal.

Rachel looks at him thoughtfully, then squares her shoulders, swallowing hard. "I love you, and I know that you love me. If I ask you a question, will you promise to answer it honestly?"

"Yeah," he answers without hesitating.

"Do you have feelings for Santana? Beyond friendship, I mean."

It seems like an easy question to answer, because he loves Rachel. But she's looking at him very seriously right now, and he sometimes thinks that someone can love more than one person at a time - he's been there before, sort of - so he takes a second to really think about it.

In the last few months, Santana has gone from someone who he mostly avoided to someone that he really likes spending time with; he can tell when she's upset about something, and when she is, he wants to do whatever he can to make her feel better. Under all of the fight and the snark, she's a girl who's been ignored and had her heart stepped on. And the thing is, now that he understands a little of who she really is, deep down, he likes the front she puts up even more. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but there's something he likes about being able to tell the difference between who Santana is and who she wants people to _believe_ she is.

"Maybe," he finally admits, surprised by his own answer. He really doesn't know when it happened, but...maybe he does have feelings for Santana. "Rachel, I don't-"

"Do you think we're going to be together forever?" she interrupts. He looks at her with wide eyes.

"Rachel." They haven't talked about this, not yet. Rachel is going to New York, period. He's applied to a couple of schools in the city, but he's also put in applications at OSU and U of M just in case. For Finn, it's enough that they're together right now, and he doesn't want to waste any of the time that they do have worrying or thinking about what might happen after that.

"We have to be realistic," she says quietly. "Graduation - or at least the end of summer - could be the end of us."

He hates this conversation even more than he thought he would when he was driving over here and thought that she was going to be upset with him for cheating on her with Santana. This - talking about their relationship ending because they're going to different places in life - is somehow worse.

"If we are operating with an expiration date, it doesn't make sense for you to ignore your feelings for someone else, if you have them."

"I love you," he insists, sure that this is her way of breaking up with him.

"I know." Her voice has that soft, reassuring quality that she gets sometimes when she can tell that he isn't feeling so sure of himself. It usually makes him feel amazing, but it's not working the same way now. "You can love one person and still care for another. Maybe you could fall in love with Santana, too."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"_No_." She's adamant, shaking her head and grabbing his hand. There are tears in her eyes. "I'm..." She takes a deep breath. "I'm giving you permission. To figure out how you feel about her."

He understands the words that she's saying, but he doesn't understand what she's telling him. "Are you telling me to cheat on you?" he asks carefully.

She smiles wryly. "It isn't cheating if I tell you that you can," she whispers.

* * *

><p>They talk about it again on Monday after school, when things aren't so fresh and Finn isn't fighting a lingering hangover.<p>

"I'm not telling you to just have sex with her," Rachel says carefully. She's perched on the edge of his bed, and she hasn't ever looked more uncomfortable sitting there. (He hasn't seen her look this uncomfortable in front of him since the first time that they hung out alone together in his room, back at the house he and his mom were in before she and Burt got married and they moved to the new place. She's never been this uncomfortable in this room.)

He avoided Santana all day at school. Seriously, he talked to her during the class they have together, because he sits next to her, and he said hey at lunch, but otherwise, he stayed as far away as he could. He can't even look at her without thinking not-so-friendly thoughts. Since he has no intention of cheating on Rachel, that's really not okay.

"I don't understand," he tells her for what must be the tenth time in two days.

She takes a deep breath and is quiet for a minute, thinking. "When you kissed," she finally says, "it wasn't just because you wanted to kiss her, right?"

He doesn't know why they kissed; he doesn't even know who kissed who. Which, actually, makes what Rachel is saying completely true. It isn't like he looked at Santana and thought about what he was going to do before he did it. It just happened.

"I mean, yeah, I guess."

"So if you had sex with her, it wouldn't just be because you thought it would be good or whatever," Rachel says. "It would be more than that, even if you don't know yet what it would be."

She makes sense, sort of, but he still just blinks at her. "So you want me to go up to Santana and tell her that we should do it?"

Rachel laughs, shaking her head a little. "Maybe we should table the discussion for now," she says after a moment. "It's very complicated."

Um, yeah. Finn has no idea what's going on, honestly. He kissed Santana, but Rachel isn't mad. In fact, it seems like she's telling him that he can (should?) kiss Santana some more, because maybe their relationship isn't going to last and he shouldn't waste a chance to be with someone else.

Huh. Maybe he does know what's going on, even if he doesn't totally understand it.

He leans over and kisses her forehead because it feels like the right thing to do.

"Do one thing for me?" she asks, waiting for his nod before she continues. "Just...don't tell me. I don't want to know about what happens between the two of you as long as you're being safe."

He can't imagine what would happen between him and Santana, but he just nods and wraps his arms around her when she leans in for a hug.

* * *

><p>For a while, nothing changes.<p>

Rachel is his girlfriend, and he loves her. They go out on dates and spend time together doing nothing, and they have sex whenever they manage to get some time alone together without parents or Kurt or whoever interrupting. He's pretty sure he couldn't love her more if he tried. She's supportive and encouraging, and the best part is knowing that she loves him just as much as he loves her.

Santana is his friend, and he loves her too, though it's not the same. They hang out, too, at school and at parties and sometimes just the two of them, when Rachel is busy and neither of them has any other plans. The more time they spend together and the more he gets to really know her, the more he likes her. She's hilarious, for one thing, and you can always count on her to tell the truth, even if it's not so nice. But there's this part of her that she usually keeps hidden from everyone else, a quiet, kind of vulnerable girl that she's let Finn see a couple of times, and he likes that side of her just as much as he likes the snarky bitch. (Well, he likes the snarky bitch when she isn't being a bitch to him, but nowadays, her barbs are almost always directed at someone else, and they tend to be more teasing and funny than horribly cruel.)

He spends Valentine's Day with Rachel this year, which is a million times better than being at home sick in bed like last year, thinking about the girl he wants to be with and how she's really with someone else. They have school that day, and student council is selling these heart-shaped lollipops that Finn has to buy when Brittany corners him at his locker before first hour. He gives one to Rachel, who smiles and kisses his cheek before heading off to French, and one to Santana, who gives him a, "Thanks, Hudson," while she tears the wrapper off and spins in her chair in computer applications.

(That night, he takes Rachel to this restaurant in Westerville that she loves because they make some black bean thing that he actually has to admit doesn't suck when she insists that he try it. It's too cold to park somewhere, and each of their parents are at home, so they have to settle for some mostly-innocent kisses in her bedroom, but that's okay.)

When things do start to change, it's definitely Finn's fault.

Kurt and Finn get into it one day over something that starts out fucking stupid and ends up with them yelling at one another about their dead parents while Finn's mom stands in the kitchen doorway with her hand over her mouth, and then Burt's standing in between them shouting that they both need to shut up, which Finn has only heard him say once before, so he knows it's completely serious.

Still, he's mad enough that he doesn't care. His mom just nods when he looks at her and says that he needs to get the hell out of the house, which makes him love her even more than he already does.

He forces himself not to squeal the tires when he pulls out of the driveway, but that's more because it's hard on his truck than because it's rude and everyone in the house will hear. He does choose his loudest, angriest playlist when he's sitting at a stoplight, the one that starts with Pantera and goes from there, and turns it up loud enough that it makes his ears hurt.

He thinks he's just going to drive around aimlessly, but he finds himself sitting in Santana's driveway, looking at the back of her black two-door and wondering how, exactly, he got here.

She comes out of the house before he gets out of the truck, her arms wrapped around herself and the sweats she's wearing tucked into the top of a pair of those super ugly boots that every girl seems to own. He hops out of the truck before she even gets to the end of the sidewalk; she's just wearing a thermal shirt, and it's way too cold for her to be outside without a coat.

"What are you doing here?" she asks when he gets to her.

He keeps walking up towards her door, basically forcing her to follow with him. "I don't know," he answers honestly. "Kurt and I got into this huge fight, and I was just driving around and ended up here."

She nods and pushes the front door open, leaning down to slip her bare feet out of her boots when he's pushing it closed behind him. "My parents went to visit my grandma, but I lied and said we had a glee rehearsal tomorrow," she tells him, shifting her weight from foot to foot while he hangs his coat in the closet like he knows he's supposed to. "They won't be back till tomorrow, so we could hang out. And if you don't want to go home, you can stay here," she offers with a shrug.

He knows that Rachel has plans to have dinner with Shelby tonight, and he was just thinking that he was going to see if Puck wanted to hang out, so he can't think of a good reason to say no.

He texts his mom to let her know where he is (he knows that she worries, and she really, really doesn't need to) and accepts the beer that Santana offers, though he doesn't have any intention of getting drunk here tonight. Things tend to go badly when he's angry _and_ drunk.

They go up to her room because Santana says something about cleaning out her vanity. Finn ends up sitting on her bed with a purple sequined throw pillow in his lap while she sits at her vanity table and watches his reflection in the mirror while she sorts through whatever she has in the drawers, throwing things into the little wastebasket sitting beside her every couple of minutes.

"Did Kurt start it this time or did you stick your clodhopper of a foot in your mouth?" she asks after a couple of minutes.

Finn resists the urge to throw the pillow at the back of her head solely because she's a girl and that makes it wrong. "I don't even know, but he brought up my dad, and I said something about how at least he got to know his mom before she died. It was kind of a clusterfuck." He shrugs one shoulder. "It's not the kind of stuff you're supposed to say to family."

"So, you were both only children for like, seventeen years, and now you're both just supposed to act like brothers?"

"Mom and Burt might like it if we did, but they know that isn't going to happen," he says. "Like, I love Kurt, and it's totally brotherly, but Puck feels more like my brother than Kurt does, you know?" She meets his eyes in the mirror. "Like, Puck has been my bro forever, and even though I kind of hated him for a while, he'll always be my bro. Kurt's the guy I used to pick on who set up our parents because he had a crush on me." Santana snorts out a laugh, which makes Finn smile in spite of himself. "It's not the easiest thing in the world."

Santana drops what he thinks is a tube of lip gloss into the wastebasket, stands up, and comes to sit next to him on the bed. "Everybody at school acts like you're brothers."

Finn rolls his eyes. "I know."

"That sucks." She inspects her fingernails for a moment - they're painted a color that may be purple or black, though he can't be sure - before looking at him again. "I'm pretty sure that I'd kill someone if I was related to Kurt. Probably Kurt."

Finn smirks. "He's not that bad."

"No, he's not," she agrees easily, nodding. "Except for when he's awful. There's like, no happy medium with that kid, and most of the time he sucks."

It isn't funny, really, but he finds himself laughing anyhow, and Santana's giggling beside him, which just sets him off more, and it doesn't make any sense, but he can't stop laughing, even when his stomach starts to hurt and it's getting hard to catch his breath.

"You know," he says after he's caught his breath, "I didn't know why I came over here, really, but I think this was it." She raises her eyebrows. "You made this a funny thing instead of wanting to talk it over or whatever."

_Like Rachel would have,_ he thinks.

"Well, I'm awesome at holding grudges, and I'm all for other people doing it, but it sucks to do that with someone you live with," she points out. "You might as well just...chalk it up to Kurt being Kurt and let it go."

"That's actually really good advice."

"Yeah, well, I'm awesome at giving advice, too," she teases.

He doesn't know why, exactly, that's the thing that makes him lean forward and kiss her, but he does.

She squeaks against his lips, but the sound dies when he catches her bottom lip between his, and then she's sinking into the kiss, her hand coming up to fist in the front of his polo shirt.

Her fingers are curled there into the fabric when she tears her lips from his and sucks in a breath. "Finn, what are you doing?"

He's a fucking idiot, because the only thing that he can think to say is, "Rachel said it's okay."

Santana takes her hand off him and slips off the bed to look at him. "What?"

"Fuck," he mutters. "I told Rachel that we kissed when we were drunk that night after Puck's party, and she told me to like, do whatever felt right with you." He can't read her expression at all, so he just keeps talking. "That, right now, felt right, so I did it."

"Rachel told you to cheat on her, Finn? Do you know how fucking stupid you sound right now, trying to pull this shit?" Her voice is laced with sarcasm and derision and something else that he can't name, and yeah, he knows how stupid he sounds, but it's _true_.

"It's true," he insists. "And it isn't cheating because she _told_ me to do it."

"Crazy eyes, kitten calendar Rachel Berry agreed to be in an open relationship."

"Don't," he warns gently, shaking his head. Her voice has that mean Santana edge to it that hasn't been directed at him in months, and he doesn't like hearing it now.

"You really expect me to believe this, Finn?"

He moves to stand in front of her. "It's true." She looks up at him with those dark, doubtful eyes that are making his stomach knot up. "She said that she doesn't know if we're still going to be together after this year, like if I don't go to New York, and she thinks that I should like, keep my options open or something."

He can tell by the expression on her face that she can't decide if she wants to be offended or if she wants to believe him at all, and he doesn't know if it's because he's explaining it poorly or because this whole thing really is crazy.

"I don't know if you're insane for thinking I'm going to believe you, or if this is actually true and Rachel is insane," she says after a few agonizing seconds.

"It's the truth, Santana."

She seems to consider this for a moment, watching him, then takes a deep breath. "I think you should go," she finally tells him. "I don't know what to do with any of this."

He spends too much time driving around town sort of aimlessly after he leaves Santana's, thinking about what just happened. He should have just left well enough alone. His relationship with Rachel is as strong as it's ever been, and he loves her. He likes the friendship he has with Santana too, and he may have just completely ruined it.

He goes home when the sun starts to set and he's decided that this has to be the worst day he's had in a long time.

* * *

><p>"Santana and I talked yesterday."<p>

You know what really fucking hurts? Snorting hot coffee up through your nose because your girlfriend tells you that she had a conversation with the girl you kissed twice who she's told you to "do what feels right" with when you're taking a drink.

He'd called Rachel on Saturday night and gave her kind of a rundown of what had happened. If she'd thought it was weird that he'd gone to Santana's when he was mad at Kurt, or if she was upset about it, she kept it to herself, because she'd just speculated that maybe he hadn't chosen the right words and said that she was sure that everything would be cleared up soon enough. Like, she gave him the kind of conversation that he would have had with Puck (well, Sam, since Rachel would never swear as much as Puck) instead of the conversation that he expected to be having with his girlfriend. It had been kind of weird and kind of awesome all at once, at least partially because Rachel has this insane ability to make him believe that everything really will be okay.

What he hadn't realized was that she meant that she was going to talk to Santana herself in an effort to make things okay.

Her face is a cross between concerned and grossed out when he takes the tissues that she offers him, holding his half-full coffee while he wipes at his nose and tries to get his eyes to stop watering. Seriously, coffee in your sinuses? It hurts.

"Are you all right?" Rachel asks when he tosses the tissues into a trash can in the corner of the hallway. He nods and takes his coffee cup when she holds it out, dropping it into the trash can, too. He's had all the coffee he can handle for the day. "Anyhow," she goes on when he's fallen into step beside her and they're moving down the hall. "I called her to try to clear up any misunderstanding the two of you may have had on Saturday."

He watches her dial her combination into her locker and pull the door open. "That's kind of weird, Rachel."

She gives him a sympathetic look. "Yes, well, I think we're all three on the same page now, though this is really between the two of you." She pulls a couple of books out of her locker before closing the door, and he's pretty sure that she means for this to be the end of the conversation. Except she hasn't told him anything.

"Wait." He stares at her for a moment. "So what did you even talk about?"

"I mostly just confirmed your story," Rachel answers, shrugging one shoulder delicately. "She thought that maybe you were making things up in some elaborate ruse to coerce her into helping you be unfaithful to me, though she admitted that such a thing would be more than unlikely coming from you. She and I talked about exactly what you and I talked about: The two of you being open to experiencing whatever emotions may be happening between you."

"Oh," he says eloquently.

She stands on her toes and kisses him quickly. "I have to get to government. We'll talk later."

He totally bombs a quiz in Spanish because he's distracted by all of this stuff with Santana and Rachel. But like...what _even_ with all of this?

He'd pretty much decided to drop the Santana thing even though Rachel told him to go for it. He didn't want to mess things up between any of the three of them, not when things were so good. Now though...

He has zero idea what's going on right now, but by the time he heads to the computer applications class he and Santana share, he's made a decision.

He's going to have to pretend that nothing has changed between any of the three of them in the last few weeks. It's the only way that he's going to manage to keep his sanity and not spend all of his time waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Can we just pretend that nothing's changed?" he blurts when Santana comes in and takes her seat behind her computer.

She sets her notebook down on the table to the left of her keyboard and gives him a weird look. "You mean the fact that your awesomely crazy girlfriend is encouraging you to explore the possibilities with me?" she asks, using this tone of voice that lets him know that 'explore the possibilities' is something that Rachel said.

"Yeah."

She just looks at him, considering, for long enough that he starts to feel uncomfortable sitting there in this computer chair. "I don't think we can do that," she finally says, her voice almost too quiet.

His heart sinks, because he _knew_ that this was going to fuck everything up, and for once, getting the confirmation that he was right really sucks.

She licks her lips and starts talking again before he can start filling the silence with nonsense. "What happened on Saturday..." She glances towards the front of the room for some reason before meeting his eyes again. "I liked it, okay? But it sucked because I thought it was going to be a thing with Rachel all over again, and I'm done with that shit. But if she's okay with it," she tilts her head thoughtfully, "maybe we should try being friends who kiss."

* * *

><p>So Santana is Finn's friend who he kisses.<p>

Rachel is Finn's girlfriend who he loves.

They know about each other, and they like each other, and he doesn't know how long it can last, but no one is jealous or bitchy or hurt by any of the stuff that goes on.

It's either the best deal ever or like, a nuclear bomb just waiting to annihilate everyone and everything.

They had exactly one conversation about it, all three of them standing in the parking lot between Finn's truck and Santana's car, parked next to each other because that's where he always parks and Santana and Puck have been fighting over the space next to his for whatever reason since Santana and Finn got their licenses sophomore year.

"I don't think any of us wants to deal with any sort of rumors regarding this arrangement," Rachel said plainly, slipping her bare hands into her coat pockets against the chill. "I think that it only makes sense to keep things quiet."

Finn kind of expected Santana to be pissed off about that, to think that Rachel wanted her to be a dirty little secret or whatever, but she nodded her head, her ponytail bobbing. "Definitely." She met Finn's eyes. "We'll keep it behind closed doors."

He thinks he nodded. He might have been having an out-of-body experience, so he's not entirely sure.

But honestly, other than being more physical with Santana, nothing changes. He spends just as much time with each of them as he did before, though now he realizes just how much time he was actually spending with Santana already. They mostly hang out at her house because he doesn't want to have to explain what's going on with the girls to his mom or Kurt, and because he always ends up wanting to kiss her when they're out in public together, and he knows that's a bad idea. It'll just start a bunch of rumors and make drama that they're trying to avoid.

He knows that it's weird, but it really does work for them.

Just a couple of weeks after they have their little "rules" conversation, Rachel and her dads go to New York for a long weekend to look at some colleges and go to a show (she's been talking about _The Book of Mormon_, and he thinks that a musical written by the _South Park_ guys is bound to be awesome). They leave on Thursday afternoon, and being at school on Friday without her there is really weird. He knows for sure that she hasn't missed a single day of high school to date because she told him, but he hadn't realized just how quiet it would seem without her around.

Santana laughs when he tells her that when they're walking to lunch. "Because she never shuts up." She rolls her eyes when he makes a face. "Look, I don't want to staple her lips together every time she opens her mouth any more, but that girl talks all the fucking time."

Finn doesn't say anything, but sometimes Rachel actually does stop talking, and not just when she's upset or trying to prove a point. It doesn't happen often because Rachel claims that she has too much nervous energy for it, but sometimes they manage to just lie together and do nothing. They don't play music or watch a movie or talk or anything, He loves Rachel because she is who she is, but the quiet thing is something that he likes because he knows that not everyone is lucky enough to get to see her like that.

He goes to Santana's that night after Friday night dinner with his family. Her mom lets him in and sends him up to Santana's room with a smile. Over the last several weeks, Finn has realized that not only are Santana's parents kind of clueless about a lot of the things that go on with their daughter, they don't really have any rules that would prevent the sort of things that his mom's open door rule is designed to discourage.

(He wonders, sometimes, what story Santana has given her parents, what they think Finn and Santana's relationship is. He tries not to think about it too much.)

She's sprawled out on her bed reading a book when he walks into her room, wearing a pair of those silky pajama pants that she has in about a dozen different colors (these are slate gray) with a black tank top. Her hair is loose, though the ends are still all curly from the ponytail she had to wear it in all day at school, and he can tell that she's completely engrossed in what she's reading. He gets the door all the way closed before she even realizes that he's there. She smiles when she does. "Hey."

He toes off his shoes and leaves them next to her vanity before getting onto the bed beside her. "What are you reading?"

She slips her bookmark - a length of black satin ribbon - between the pages and sets the book aside. "It's about a girl who relives her last day alive over and over trying to make things happen the way they're supposed to."

"That sucks." Her lips curve upwards, but it isn't really a smile. "Does she die in the end?"

Santana shrugs. "I haven't gotten there yet."

They end up watching episodes of _Las Vegas_ on DVD, which is actually better than Finn expects. The girls are hot, even if the redhead needs to lay off the plastic surgery, and the guy in charge is freaking Sonny Coroleon.

"I could do that," Santana comments when the credits roll on an episode. "Be a casino hostess for high rollers."

Finn doesn't know a lot about Vegas, but between this show and like, _The Hangover_, he thinks Santana could definitely fit in there if it was where she wanted to be. "You'd be awesome in Vegas."

She just looks at him for a second, appraisingly, then leans over to kiss him gently.

This is exactly how things usually start with Santana. They're just hanging out, and then one of them kisses the other and they just keep going. Tonight feels different though, because every time Finn tries to deepen the kiss, she pulls back a little, keeping it light and teasing the hell out of him. She smiles and nips at his bottom lip with her teeth when he says her name, so he curves his hand around the back of her neck to keep her where he wants her when he leans over to kiss her again. He can feel her body relax when he slips his tongue past her lips to tease hers, and she practically melts against him when he lies back against her pillows, tugging her along.

Finn had always thought of Santana's kisses as sort of dirty and deep, almost like they're something that she needs to get out of the way before she gets to what she really wants, but he either remembered wrong or something has just changed since he was kissing her before (yeah, it has) because it's different now. Her kisses are still a little dirty, but they're slower now, like she's letting herself enjoy a kiss for the sake of a kiss.

Honestly, he doesn't know why he's thinking so much when she's draping her leg over his hip a little and her fingers are toying with the hair just above his ear, something she always does that makes him a little crazy.

The moan she lets out when he pushes her onto her back is so sexy he can hardly stand it, so he takes a second just to look at her, all bruised lips and dark eyes with her hair fanned out across the pillow. He always knew that Santana was hot, but right now the fact that she's just really _beautiful_ is what strikes him.

"Finn," she kind of whines, shifting her hips so that the side of her thigh brushes against his.

"You're beautiful, you know that?" His brain isn't really doing a lot of the work right now, so it's not like he planned to say it, but it's definitely true, and if the way she slips her hand into the back of his hair and pulls him down to kiss him is any indication, she likes the way it sounds.

He needs to feel more of her, so he pushes his hand beneath the side of her tank top, his fingertips playing over her ribs before moving around to her back. When she sucks gently at his lower lip, he flattens his palm against her skin and pulls her body closer to his. She tears her mouth from his to make an incredible sound, so he skims his lips up her jaw to her ear, nipping at the lobe. Her hands push up under the hem of his shirt, and then her fingertips are digging into the small of his back, which is hotter than he can even explain. He whispers her name, his breath washing over her ear warmly, which sets off kind of a chain reaction that he'll be able to point to later when he tries to figure out what set the whole thing in motion.

Her fingernails bite into the skin of his back. "Oh, god," she sort of whimpers, and then she's tugging his shirt up over his head, pushing him away so she can get rid of her own.

Finn's seen Santana topless before, but he still has to take another second to look at her. She's breathing hard, and though her breath catches a little when he brings his hand to her breast. Her nipple is already hard against his palm, and she arches into his touch when he trails his fingertip over the peak. She pushes her hand into the back of his hair when he lowers his head to kiss along her chest, moving his lips over the swell of her breast until her fingers tighten and he can tell that she's really impatient for him to give her more. She cries out softly when he closes his lips over her nipple, her back arching again when he sucks before scraping his teeth gently over her skin.

Everything goes kind of fuzzy when Santana starts unbuckling his belt, deliberately brushing her hand over his cock through the fabric as she works.

They've had sex before, sure, but this time is completely different. He isn't half-afraid of her any more, and this time, he really wants to be with _her_ instead of doing it to prove a point to someone else. She comes when he's inside her this time, which she didn't do that first time (though she'd guided his hand between her thighs then and he'd touched her till she let go), her neck arching back and his name falling from her lips as she tightens around him, pulling him over the edge with her.

She takes a sip from the bottle of water on her bedside table after, handing it to him once she's finished. Finn's waiting for the comment, for her to reference the last time and compare him to virgin him, but it never comes. Instead, she kisses him gently before telling him to get dressed again in case her parents come home early, and she disappears to the kitchen only to reappear five minutes later with a giant bowl of popcorn and two Dr. Peppers, telling him to start the next episode.

* * *

><p>Rachel asks him if he had a good weekend when she gets back to school on Tuesday morning. He tells her that he did. She doesn't ask for details, and he doesn't volunteer any, happy instead to listen to her tell him all about the musical she saw and how amazing it's going to be to live in the dorms at NYU when she gets there.<p>

* * *

><p>"Dude, what's going on with you and Santana?" Puck asks one day when they're sitting in Spanish.<p>

Finn blinks once. "Nothing?" He and Santana are both really careful to act like they really are just friends when they're at school or around Kurt at his house, saving the more-than-friendly stuff for when they're alone, so Finn doesn't understand what Puck's talking about.

"Don't bullshit me," Puck insists. "Something's going on, and as my bro, you're like, required to tell me what's up."

Finn puts on what he hopes is a good _what the fuck_ face. "We're friends, man. Everyone knows that."

"Santana doesn't look at her _friends_ like that, dude." Puck rolls his eyes. "Finn. Come on."

"Do you really think I would cheat on Rachel?" Finn asks seriously. Talking like this would probably make him feel like shit if he actually was cheating on Rachel, but that's not what's going on with Santana at all. "And with _Santana_ of all people?"

"You'd be a fucking moron if you did," Puck says with something like agreement in his voice. "That girl..." He trails off, shaking his head. "Look, Santana stopped fucking around with me a while ago, and you're like, the only dude I see her hanging out with, and the only chick she hangs out with is Quinn, so I know she's not hitting that." Finn bites back a snicker. "The way she looks at you though. Those aren't Santana's 'we're just friends' eyes," he says seriously.

"Puck," Finn says seriously, leaning toward his friend. "I am not cheating on Rachel with Santana."

Puck holds up his hands in surrender. "If you say so, dude."

Rachel looks thoughtful when he mentions the conversation later at her house.

"I don't think either of you have been acting any differently than you were before, but Puck has known both of you longer, and he certainly knows a different side of Santana than I do," she concedes. "Maybe he sees something that none of us realize is there."

"I'm not cheating on you though." It feels really important to point that out right now, even though he knows that she knows.

She gets up from her desk and comes over to where he's sitting on her bed, pulling the skirt of her dress up a little so she can straddle his lap. "I know that," she murmurs reassuringly just before she kisses him. She brushes the tips of her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck in the way that almost always gives him goosebumps because it feels so fucking good.

"I love you," he murmurs when she drops her lips to the side of his neck.

She pulls away to look at him, biting the corner of her lip. Her eyes are all dark and just a little shiny, and he feels the familiar twist low in his stomach. "I love you, too."

She says it again just before she lowers herself over him, and he really isn't sure which time he likes better.

* * *

><p>The first time the problem comes up, Finn thinks he probably should have seen it coming.<p>

He's sitting between Rachel and Santana at lunch, which isn't nearly as weird as he'd expected it to be the first time it happened. He'd always worried that Santana would be the one who got tired of pretending like they were just friends (as opposed to friends who have sex) at school, but she never does or even says anything at school that would make anyone think anything weird is going on.

"I got the rest of season two from Netflix yesterday," Santana says after Finn finishes talking to Mike about their assignment in government. "You wanna come over tonight and watch with me?"

Finn has watched exactly four episodes of _Las Vegas_ in their entirety, even though they've gone through a season and a half. Generally they make it through half an episode before one of them has to kiss the other, which always leads to more than kissing. (Finn is really, really grateful that Santana's parents don't seem to care about what goes on in her room. He feels a little guilty too, because he knows now that Santana told them that he has a girlfriend, so they don't have any reason to think he and Santana are doing anything inappropriate in her room in the first place. Their lax rules mean that he actually has more opportunities to have sex with Santana than he does with Rachel, which is another of those things that he should probably feel more guilty about than he already does.)

"Rachel and I are going to see that new movie with Olivia Wilde," he tells her. It kind of sucks because as much as he likes spending time with Rachel, his only interest in this movie is the fact that Olivia Wilde is hot. Otherwise, yeah. He'd totally rather 'watch _Las Vegas_' with Santana.

"Okay," she says neutrally. "Whenever. Olivia Wilde is really fucking hot, though."

"You're welcome to join us," Rachel pipes up, startling Finn. He hadn't realized that she was listening to him and Santana.

Finn knows that this isn't too weird to anyone who might be listening, because the three of them have had this peaceful thing going on for a while, but that doesn't mean that they all three hang out together outside of school. That prospect, actually, really freaks him out, because as much as Rachel acts pretty much the same outside of school with him (she's a little more affectionate, sure, and they have sex, but the way they talk to each other is the same), Santana acts really, really different. She _can't_ act the same way at school as she does when it's just the two of them. The idea of being alone somewhere with both of them? Not okay.

"No, thanks," Santana answers simply. Finn feels the relief wash all through him even as Santana agrees to play paper football with Puck and Rachel asks Finn some question about Regionals wardrobe.

The problem though, becomes really clear when he's getting in the car to pick Rachel up later that night. When he thinks about where he's going and how he's going to be spending his night, he finds himself wishing that he was going to hang out with Santana instead of going to a movie with Rachel. You know, his girlfriend who he's in love with.

It distracts him all night, and he's actually relieved when Rachel tells him that she'd rather go home than park somewhere because she has a tickle in her throat that she doesn't want to become a full-blown cold this close to Regionals. (The way she says it does make him smile though, like she wouldn't still freak out about having a cold even if they were months away from a competition. He knows her, so he knows better.)

He drives around for just a little while after he's dropped Rachel off, listening to whatever comes on the radio and thinking, and by the time he gets home, he's decided that he's making too much of things. Wanting to hang out with Santana when he already has plans with Rachel doesn't mean anything other than that sex sounds like more fun than watching a movie with a hot girl. He's pretty sure if the situation had been reversed, he'd feel exactly the same.

* * *

><p>Winning at Regionals is kind of anti-climactic after the drama of the last two years, first losing to Jesse St. James and Vocal Adrenaline and then going up against Kurt and Blaine and The Warblers. Aural Intensity is still trying to cheat, but it doesn't matter, because New Directions is just <em>better<em> than they're ever going to be. Finn doesn't even catch the name of the other choir (he assumes it's just as stupid and/or borderline inappropriate as every other show choir name), but they're even worse than Aural Intensity, and New Directions wins easily.

Rachel sits with Mr. Schue on the bus ride back to Lima, insisting on seeing the scoring pages from the judges so she can start making plans for the things they need to work on. The guy has apparently decided to stop fighting Rachel on this kind of stuff, because he just hands the pages over and talks about possible solutions to the few problems the judges have pointed out.

(Finn figures that means more booty camp crap, and whatever. It really did help with his dancing, and after this year, he's never going to get the opportunity to do anything like this again. Now isn't the time to start bitching about people pointing out what a terrible dancer he is.)

They're barely out on the highway when Santana comes and flops down in the seat beside Finn's. "You know," she says, "I like Rachel now, but listening to her argue with Schue over the best way to start preparing for Nationals now that we know about how weak we are dancing as a group is still really fucking annoying."

Finn just smiles, because even though he understands why most people are annoyed by Rachel, he really doesn't feel the same way.

"You guys are coming to my place, right?"

They all signed 'we won't drink' pledges for Mr. Schue at the beginning of the year like the ones they had last year, but Santana sent a mass text to everyone about a party at her place as soon as they'd gotten back to their dressing room after the results were announced. She's insisting that it's a one-time thing, and even Rachel agrees that it's a good idea to take advantage of a chance to blow off some steam, so they're all going.

"As far as I know, everybody's coming."

Santana lets out a little hum and slouches down a little, lifting her feet off the floor to press her shins against the back of the seat in front of her and crossing her arms over her chest. The seat is small enough that they're pressed together, side-to-side. "You know, I really do like winning," she muses, grinning up at him when he chuckles.

They fall asleep together like that, lulled by the motion of the bus and the quiet hum of their teammates talking.

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Rachel, leaning over the back of the seat in front of him, smiling and saying Santana's name quietly. "We're home," she says when she realizes that Finn is awake. She nods towards Santana. "Help me wake her?"

He nudges Santana's arm gently with his elbow, rubbing his other hand over his face in an effort to rub away some of the sleepiness. "San," he mutters, nudging her again. She glares at him the second her eyes open, which just makes him grin. It figures that she'd hate being woken up. "We're home."

Her expression softens a little and she takes a deep breath before putting her legs down and uncrossing her arms. She doesn't say anything before she gets up, going to get her stuff, Finn figures.

Rachel is looking at him oddly when he looks back up at her. "I'll have to stop at home," she says after a moment, "but I agreed to get ready for Santana's party with Kurt and Blaine at your house."

"Okay," he agrees, easing himself out of the cramped seat and stretching his arms over his head before grabbing his bag from the opposite sit and following Rachel off the bus.

(Everyone sleeps at Santana's that night so they don't have to worry about designated drivers, and if either Rachel or Santana thinks it's weird that he sleeps in a guest room with Rachel while Quinn crashes with Santana in hers, neither of them says anything about it to him.

Finn does think it's a little weird, though he can't exactly put his finger on why.)

* * *

><p>When Finn answers his phone and hears Santana's tearful voice asking him if he can pick her up during spring break, it's like a flashback to all those months ago when all of the stuff between them really got started. It's raining, just like it was then, but it's just a little after nine o'clock on Tuesday night, so he figures that this isn't about her being drunk.<p>

"Where are you?" he asks, grabbing for a hoodie before heading out of his room.

"The hospital."

Finn freezes in the hallway outside his room. "What?"

She lets out a shaky breath. "My mom and I were in an accident. I'm fine, and she's going to be fine, but they want to keep her overnight because she hit her head and the airbag bruised her ribs. My dad can't take me because he was on call, and he's still dealing with the asshole who was in the other car."

_Fuck_. "I'll be there in like, ten minutes, okay?"

He stops in the living room to tell his mom and Burt what's going on. "Oh, honey," Mom says after he finishes. "Let her know we're thinking of her."

He nods. "I'm going to stay with her till her dad gets home, okay?"

"Sure. Call us and let us know how she's doing, okay?"

Santana's sitting in a chair behind the reception desk when Finn walks into the emergency room, her eyes red-rimmed and hair messy and a little damp. She stands when she sees him, coming around from behind the desk to wrap her arms around him. "Are you really okay?" he asks, rubbing his hand up and down her back.

She pulls away, nodding and sniffling a little. "I'm fine. Let's go."

"Don't you need to tell your dad you're going?"

She shakes her head. "He just came to tell me that he's sewing up the forehead of the dumbass who slid though the stoplight and hit us, so he'll be busy for like, an hour. We can just leave."

He's trying not to act like he's hovering over her or whatever, but he can't help noticing the way that she winces when she pulls the seatbelt across her body in the truck and how she's shaking like a leaf when he stops at the stoplight at the end of the street. He doesn't say anything, but he does reach over and turn the heat up to full blast even though it isn't actually that cold outside. Santana shoots him a look. "I think it's adrenaline. The shaking," she says when he raises his eyebrows. "I'm not cold."

He shrugs. "I am." Unless she straight up tells him to turn it down, he's going to leave it going.

She looks at him knowingly, but she doesn't say anything else.

They have to go through the gate and around the back of the house so Santana can let them in through the back door with a spare key that she pulls down from the top of a window frame because she doesn't have her own , and they leave their wet shoes sitting just inside the glass doors that lead out onto the back patio.

"You don't have to stay, Finn," she tells him when he's following her up the stairs to her room.

He believes her when she says that she doesn't have any real injuries - he doesn't think Dr. Lopez would have let her leave the hospital if she did - but he can tell by the way that she's moving that she's sore. He waits until they're in her room to say, "I'm not going anywhere, San."

She pushes the dresser drawer she was digging through shut and sighs. "Fine. I'm going to shower off the hospital smell."

Finn waits until he hears the water running in the bathroom before heading downstairs to the kitchen. He doesn't know if she's eaten dinner (he's figuring she hasn't), but putting something in her stomach now can't hurt. He calls his mom to catch her up while he toasts a slice of the whole grain bread that he finds and spreads it with some of the Nutella he finds in the pantry, then grabs a bottle of water and carries them both upstairs.

Santana rolls her eyes when he walks into her room. She's sitting in the middle of her bed in one of Puck's old McKinley football tee shirts (Finn can see the number twenty scrawled on the left sleeve in permanent marker, something they all did at football camp every year) and a pair of plaid pajama pants. Her hair is in a messy ponytail, and she's rubbing lotion onto her arms, eying the toast in his hand with disdain. "I'm not eating that."

"Have you eaten anything?" Finn asks evenly. She glares, but he ignores the look and sets the toast on its napkin beside her. "C'mon, San."

She sighs, but she doesn't bother rolling her eyes before she picks up the toast and takes a little bite off the corner.

Finn gets onto the bed beside her when she grabs the remote for her TV and starts flipping through channels, settling pretty quickly on a show that's a girl talking with a bunch of gay dudes about sex and stuff. A few years ago Finn probably would have thought it was weird, but he's worked past most of the weird thanks to Kurt and Blaine (and Santana, a little) so that now it's mostly just interesting.

Santana works through the toast really slowly, and they've watched almost an entire episode of this show before she finishes it. "You can go if you need to," she says softly, taking the bottle of water when he holds it out. "I'll be fine until my dad gets home."

"Santana." She really doesn't seem to get it. "I'm not going anywhere."

She makes fun of him when he gets under the covers with her in his jeans, just taking off his belt, but there's no way that he's going to be in bed with Santana in his boxers when her dad comes home.

"Thank you," she whispers after she's turned out the light.

Finn doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to thank him. Instead, he moves closer to her under the covers, pressing his chest against her back because she's shivering again, his hand coming to rest on the outside of her thigh over her pajama pants. She's told him more than once that she's not a cuddler, so he expects her to tell him to quit crowding, but instead she lets out a breath and moves her head a little on the pillow.

* * *

><p>The first time Finn thinks about <em>having<em> Rachel and Santana together, it's in a dream, so it's not even like it's the sort of thing that he can control.

He's had dreams about both of them before, of course. It happens. But he's never had a dream when they were both there at the same time.

(Once he had a dream where Santana turned into Rachel, which was kind of weird, but he can't control that either, so he didn't worry too much about it.)

The details start to go fuzzy as soon as he wakes up, but he remembers seeing them kiss each other, and then Santana was kissing his lips while Rachel was wrapping hers around his dick, and at one point he was definitely fucking Santana, though he's not sure how he got there.

He's late to first hour that morning because he'd said fuck it and jerked off in the shower instead of just standing under an icy spray. Honestly though, when a dude has a threesome dream, getting a tardy is totally worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

Finn's really surprised when he finds out that Santana isn't throwing herself a huge birthday party. She didn't have one last year, but that was because glee club had taken their sobriety pledge leading up to Nationals. The year before, when she turned sixteen, she had the kind of party for her sixteenth that everyone literally talked about until the graduating seniors had theirs and William Coleman nearly died of alcohol poisoning. Even though the party after Regionals was supposed to be a one-time thing for the year, Finn figured that Santana Lopez's eighteenth birthday would trump the glee club sobriety pledge.

She just shrugs when he asks her why she isn't having a party.

"So what are you going to do for your birthday?" he asks her. Their birthdays are close enough together (Finn's just three days younger than she is) that he's always sort of kept track of what she does; it would be especially weird not to know what she's got planned this year.

"I don't know," she mumbles, keeping her gaze carefully on her computer screen even though she just complained about how everything on the designer shoe site she's looking at is hideous. "Maybe we could hang out."

He's glad that he's paying attention to her, because this is exactly the sort of thing that would've slipped past him before. Now though, he gets what she's asking, just like he gets that she isn't really _asking_ it on purpose. The thing is, where this sort of thing would have been a game for Santana even just a year ago, he knows that isn't what it is. This is Santana asking Finn for something that she isn't sure he's going to say yes to.

It's a little stupid that she thinks he would say no, but he knows enough not to say that to her.

"All right," he says easily. She still doesn't look away from her computer. "You wanna do something Saturday?" Her birthday is on Tuesday, so it's not like they can really do that much with school the next day.

She smiles when she looks over at him. (Finally.) "Sure."

"You should take her somewhere out of town," Rachel suggests when he tells her about it later, smiling when he gives her a weird look. "A girl deserves to go out for her birthday, Finn, and you can't really do that here in Lima."

Rachel's right, so he ends up taking Santana a place that serves woodfire pizza before they go to an arcade a couple of towns over, a place that Sam dragged the guys to once last year. It's a little dorky, yeah, but he knows that secretly, Santana likes things that are a little dorky.

Finn's pretty sure that they're the oldest people here who aren't like, parents watching their little kids, but he forgets about it pretty quickly. It sounds stupid, but he's having too much fun to worry about what people might be thinking about him, and besides, it isn't like anyone in this town even knows that he's Finn Hudson and she's Santana Lopez. (That's kind of the point of being here in the first place.) She kicks his ass at Dance Dance Revolution, which she gloats about even though neither of them are even a little bit surprised, and Finn keeps the gloating to a minimum when he smokes her at this random shooting game in deference to the fact that they're out to celebrate her birthday.

After a while, they make their way towards the classic arcade games at the back of the place, mostly because it's less crowded here and they're both tired of little kids staring at them, waiting for their turn at whatever game.

They start out playing Pacman, but they quit after the second time that Santana fails to get the pretzel and starts to get pissed off, moving down the row to this game whose name Finn doesn't know how to pronounce that's like, space ships shooting at bugs.

"This game sucks," Finn says after a while, standing behind her and watching as she annihilates a line of bees.

"You're just mad that I'm better at it than you," she counters. He doesn't say anything (because she's totally right). He watches in surprise as she lets herself get dive-bombed by a bunch of what he thinks are butterflies before turning to face him. They're standing close enough that she has to tip her head back to look at his face. "Can we go?"

Her eyes look bright even in the dim light of the arcade, and her hair's just a little messy from moving around all night. It's impossible to forget that Santana's hot, but there have been times in the past when he hasn't realized just how _pretty_ she is. He kisses her because he wants to and he _can_, which isn't always the case, though he keeps it PG because there are kids all over the place.

"What was that for?" she asks after he pulls away. Her hands are resting against his chest, and her fingers curl into his sweater just a little when he shrugs his shoulders and grins at her.

She sits in the middle seat in his truck for the first time on the way home, her hand resting on the inside of his thigh as he drives. It isn't distracting, really, but he's very aware of the way that her fingers move against his jeans sometimes.

"So what do you want to do for your birthday?" she asks when he takes the exit into Lima.

It's stupid that the question catches him off guard, but it does. He hasn't really thought about what he wants to do this year, though he probably should since this will be his last birthday while he's living at home. This is the first year that he and Rachel have been together for his birthday, and he definitely wants to do something with her, but sitting in his truck with Santana, he realizes that he wants to spend the day with her, too.

It's kind of a problem, and he doesn't know what to do about it.

"I don't know," he admits after a few seconds, shrugging his shoulders and glancing at Santana. "I haven't really thought about it."

It isn't a lie, so he shouldn't feel guilty about it.

Except he totally does.

* * *

><p>"We need to make plans for your birthday," Rachel says when she comes into his room on Sunday afternoon. She's at the house to hang out with Kurt, but even when she isn't there to hang out with Finn, she always makes it a point to come in and say hey and stuff.<p>

He goes from just chilling on his bed, reading an article on the Indians chances this season, to being completely full of dread in the three seconds it takes Rachel to say those words.

After he left Santana's on Saturday night, he did some thinking about what he wants to do for his birthday, and he decided only one thing: It would be way easier to tell both Rachel and Santana that he wants to hang out with the guys and go out with Puck and Mike and whoever. Of course, that would also be a big fat lie, so he shot that down. No, the best thing to do when Rachel Berry is your girlfriend is just to be honest.

He swallows hard before he opens his mouth. "I want to spend it with you," he says. She beams, and he feels like a complete asshole for what he's about to say. "But I kind of want to spend it with Santana, too."

Her face falls, but just a second later, she pulls it together and gives him one of her_ 'everything's perfect even though it's really not'_ smiles.

"Other than that, I really don't know what I want to do," he finishes lamely.

Kurt calls Rachel's name from down the hall, making her glance at the door. "We'll figure something out, okay?"

He nods and watches her walk out of his room feeling like a total jerk.

* * *

><p>He's a little surprised when he gets to school on Monday morning and finds Santana and Rachel waiting for him at his locker. "Hey," he greets, trying to sound normal and, he knows, failing. He leans down to kiss Rachel's cheek because that's what he always does, but it feels weird, somehow, with Santana standing right there.<p>

"We've been talking about your birthday," Rachel tells him when he's opening his locker. "We think that all three of us should do something together."

"Rachel thinks," Santana corrects. She's leaning against the locker next to Finn's, inspecting her nails and looking bored. He knows it's an act.

"If he doesn't want to pick between us, he shouldn't have to," Rachel says seriously, her voice low so that everyone in the hallway can't hear. She looks back at Finn. "I thought maybe you'd like to go to that barbecue place you love."

"You hate that place," he reminds her. Ninety-five percent of the menu in that place is made with dead animal, and he's not sure that anything there is vegan.

She shrugs one shoulder and offers him a little smile. "Whatever you want is fine with me."

The first bell rings then, prompting Rachel to stand on her toes and kiss his cheek before she disappears down the hall for French. Santana just offers him a wink before turning on her heel and going in the opposite direction, leaving Finn standing there alone, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

* * *

><p>Finn's a little nervous all week, thinking about spending Friday night with Santana and Rachel. They've never all been alone together, and the way that he acts with each of them in private is different than the way he acts with them in public, but especially with Santana. Rachel hasn't ever seen that, and he's worried about it.<p>

"The whole point of this is for you to have the kind of birthday that you want," Rachel tells him gently when he admits his worries to her over the phone. "Maybe it'll be a little strange for me, but I knew that when I suggested it. I want you to do what feels right."

It's almost the same thing that she told him when all of this started with Santana, and even though he can't see her (maybe bringing this up over the phone wasn't the best idea, but what's done is done), she sounds like she really means what she's saying.

"I love you," he says quietly after a moment, because that's really all he can think of right then.

"I love you, too, Finn."

Friday night goes better than he ever could have expected. Rachel picks at a sad-looking green salad during dinner, the only food on the menu guaranteed by the waitress to be vegan (after they leave off the shredded cheese and replace the creamy house dressing with a squeeze of lemon juice) while Finn and Santana eat brisket and pulled pork. Most of their conversation revolves around the glee club's preparations for Nationals and how Quinn just launched her campaign for prom queen, this time with Sam by her side, and it's far more comfortable than he thought it would be. They're just hanging out, and there isn't any of the tension that he'd been worried about.

They go to Rachel's after dinner and play _Just Dance_ in the basement, a game that, contrary to what one might believe, Finn secretly kind of loves. Until tonight, that was something that only Rachel knew, but it doesn't bother him that Santana knows too. They tease him when he looks weird, but it's all in fun. (A year ago, Santana would have been a total bitch about this. Finn likes this side of her so much more than the mean girl that she was for most of high school that he can't even come up with words to explain it. He doesn't try.) The best part is that Rachel and Santana are getting along and having fun with each other without Finn having to do any work. Like, they're acting like they're really friends instead of just getting along for his sake.

"You're like, hilariously terrible," Santana comments when he stumbles his way through the end of a Katy Perry dance.

Finn turns to face her and shrugs. "You like it."

She rolls her eyes and steps closer to him. "Maybe I don't hate it," she concedes, smiling in spite of herself. He puts his hands on her hips and kisses the smile off her lips.

Rachel's standing right there waiting for him so they can do the next song, and even though she's watching them, Finn doesn't feel weird. He probably should. This is the first time that Rachel has seen him with Santana like this. It should be weird, his girlfriend watching him kiss someone else, someone that she knows he hangs out with and has sex with and, yeah, kisses on a regular basis.

But it doesn't feel weird at all.

Rachel comes up to his room with him after they've dropped Santana back at her house (Finn walked her to the door and kissed her on the front porch while Rachel sat in the driveway waiting), sitting on the bed when he goes to his closet to put away his shoes. "Tonight was fun," she says quietly, smiling when he turns to look at her. "I really understand why you and Santana are friends now."

Finn walks towards her. "Yeah?"

Rachel nods. "She's fun to spend time with. And I've always thought Santana's the prettiest when she smiles."

"You guys are awesome for this," he tells her. "Letting me spend my birthday with both of you."

She smiles, that soft one that she has for when he says something she really likes. He's a little surprised to see it now, but she's leaning over to kiss him before he can really process it. "So it was a good birthday?" she whispers against his lips, her fingers slipping into the hair at the back of his head.

He nods, tugging her with him gently when he moves to lie back against his pillows. He skims his hands up her thighs when she straddles his hips, letting the tips of his fingers dip beneath the hem of her skirt. "I bet you could still make it better though."

She's grinning when she leans down to kiss him again. She skims her lips up his jaw, then breathes out a sigh against his ear, her teeth scraping the skin just beneath it. "I bet I can."

So. Yeah. Best birthday ever.

* * *

><p>He's pretty sure that no one else has ever figured this out (Puck would come closest, but Finn thinks he would have said something if he had), but Rachel and Santana actually have a lot of things in common. They're two of the most loyal people he knows; like, once Santana or Rachel is on your side, she's on your side for life, no questions asked. They're also both really dedicated to the things they think are important. Rachel is totally devoted to making it in New York, and he's learned that Santana takes her grades way more seriously than he'd ever realized because she wants to be the next Barbara Walters or whoever. And they're both pretty dedicated to glee club, though Rachel takes that, like most things, to a whole other level.<p>

Sometimes though, the similarities freak him out.

"Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have us both at once?"

Finn's hand falters on the clasp of Santana's bra like it hasn't since...well, since the one time they were together sophomore year. He pulls back from where he was kissing along the swell of her breast to look at her, ignoring the way that her fingers tighten in his hair like she wants him to keep doing what he was doing. "What?"

She takes a deep breath, which makes her boobs do this really distracting thing, but he's pretty focused on what she's saying. "Me and Rachel." She arches her back so her stomach presses against his. "Together."

Holy fuck. "Santana."

He lets her push him onto his back and straddle his hips, watching as she unhooks her own bra and drops it off the side of her bed. She grasps his wrists and guides his hands up to touch her. "Think about it, Finn." She leans over to kiss him slow and dirty. "You could fuck both of us." She nips at his lower lip with her teeth, and he's so hard right now that it almost hurts. "Maybe she'd let me fuck her. Fuck, I wonder what she tastes like."

_Fuck_. "Stop," he orders gruffly, his voice catching in his chest. If she doesn't stop talking, he's going to lose his shit, and he is not interested in coming in his pants when he's got this girl on a bed with him.

She smirks as she moves off him, standing next to the bed and pushing her skirt off her hips with her panties. "Make me."

Finn has to put his hand over her mouth when she comes. She's really loud, and her mom is downstairs in the kitchen and the last thing he wants to do is explain to her mother why her daughter just came as hard as he's ever seen when Finn is supposed to be "just a friend."

He and Rachel are in his truck sitting in her driveway talking (making out) when she asks, "Have you ever fantasized about being with more than one person at a time?"

He shifts so quickly that he smacks his elbow on the outside of the steering wheel, right in that spot on your arm that makes the whole thing go numb. "What?"

She takes his nearly-numb hand in hers and brushes her fingertips over his palm. He can feel it, but it's different than normal. "You get to be with me and with Santana," she says quietly, her eyes on their hands instead of looking at his face. "Have you ever considered the possibility of having us at the same time?"

"Rachel."

She bites the corner of her bottom lip, then leans in to kiss him again. "I thought seeing you together would make me jealous," she murmurs, leaning her forehead against his, "but instead..." She trails off, then takes a shaky breath. "It was just really sexy, Finn."

He wishes to god that they weren't sitting in Rachel's driveway five minutes before her curfew, because if she's saying what he thinks she's saying...fuck.

He swallows hard. "Do you fantasize about it?" he asks.

She sucks in a breath and then kisses him hard, her tongue pushing past his lips and curling around his the way that she rarely does that always makes him a little crazy, and he gives up on trying to think or figure out what's going on right now.

"I have to go," she pants when she pulls away. There isn't a lot of light out here, but Finn can see how huge her pupils are. "Curfew."

Finn doesn't say anything except a quick, "I love you," after she pecks his lips and says the words. He just sits there and watches her run up the sidewalk to the front porch, her dress hitting the backs of her thighs as she moves and making hm even crazier than he already was.

(Kurt gives him a look that's half-knowing and half-disgusted when he sees that Finn is going to take a shower after he gets home, but whatever. Finn's pretty sure that if Blaine brought up having a threesome with another super hot dude, he'd need some time in the shower, too.)

* * *

><p>Making plans for prom with Rachel is like, a million times better than going with Quinn just because Rachel doesn't have all these big expectations built around some stupid dance the way Quinn did.<p>

"What should I wear?" he asks when they're talking about it in her room one afternoon.

She looks up from the magazine she's flipping through and smiles. "I think you'd look great in something really classic, but you can wear whatever you want."

"You don't want my tie to match your dress or whatever?"

Her eyes soften a little. "I'd rather we didn't clash, but we don't have to match Finn. My dress is dark blue, so unless you decide you want to wear a powder blue tux or something equally awful, whatever you choose should be fine."

"Awesome," he says, eliciting a little laugh from Rachel, and then he _has_ to lean over and kiss her. Honestly, after the mess that prom was last year, he was a little wary when people started talking about it again. He should have known that it would be different with Rachel.

(He doesn't envy Sam though, who Quinn roped into going along with her new run for prom king and queen; he's pretty sure that Sam actually does love Quinn though, in the way that Finn never really did, even when he wanted to.)

He doesn't really think too much about Santana in regards to prom (nothing, really, beyond how good she looked in her dress last year and wondering what she's going to wear this time) until she comes into computer applications and rolls her eyes when she sees that someone has set the screensaver on her computer to a prom countdown.

"Not excited about prom?" Finn asks. The glare she gives him makes him want to apologize for saying anything at all.

"Last year, I went to prom with Karofsky because I was too chicken to go with Brittany. Then I lost prom queen to Kurt, even though Dave won," she says acidly. "Oh, and another girl had my dress."

Finn blinks. "So, are you going this year?"

She rolls her eyes and sighs. "Puck wants me to go with him as friends or whatever. I don't know if I want to."

"For what it's worth, I think you should." Finn shrugs when she looks at him. "It's your senior prom, right? You only get one."

She arches an eyebrow. "That's what people said about junior prom."

"Well, you only had to go through that once, so they were right."

He can tell she doesn't want to smile, but she definitely is, which he counts as a success. And when he overhears her telling Puck that afternoon at glee rehearsal that, "This is only going to work if you keep your hands to yourself, Puckerman," he thinks it's kind of cool that she actually listened to him.

* * *

><p>There are some things about prom this year that feel exactly the same as they were last year, like standing at the bottom of the stairs in the Berrys' foyer, talking to Rachel's dad until he sees her coming down the stairs in a deep blue dress that skims over her hips before falling to her feet, and being completely blown away by how beautiful she looks. Whatever she did with her eye makeup is amazing, because it makes her eyes look even wider than they usually do, and she has the front of her hair pulling away from her face while the rest of the strands spill over her shoulders in soft curls. They pose for photos for her dads, then Finn drives them back to his house (in his mom's SUV instead of his truck, because it's cleaner and a girl in a dress like that at least deserves to ride in a clean vehicle) so they can take pictures for his mom, posing with Kurt and Blaine.<p>

It's all a lot of fun, everything that last year probably would have been fun if Finn had been with the right person instead of being with the person he thought was the right person. He figures that thing people say about hindsight probably fits in here. There's no campaigning, no watching Jesse put his hands all over Rachel, no keeping track of whose turn it is to go sing because Figgins actually didn't screw with the prom budget this year.

Kurt comes up about halfway through the night and sets his hands on his hips. "I want to dance with my best friend," he says seriously. "Stop monopolizing her."

Rachel giggles, glancing up at Finn, who takes his hands off his girlfriend's hips and holds them up in surrender. "Take her." He kisses the top of Rachel's head before he steps away to let Kurt take his place.

He finds Santana standing at the refreshment table when he goes to get a drink. She's wearing this amazing black dress that shows almost her whole back, and her hair is in this sleek bun at the nape of her neck. The whole effect is really elegant, and basically the opposite of her Cheerio uniform and ponytail, which Finn really likes.

"Dance with me," Finn says when he gets close enough to speak to her without having to shout over the music.

"Where's Rachel?"

"Dancing with Kurt. C'mon."

He doesn't wait for an answer, reaching out to wrap his fingers around her wrist and tug her gently towards the dance floor, moving so they're in the middle of the crowd instead of standing on the fringes. Santana smiles when she puts her hands on his shoulders and they start moving together. "You know, you look pretty good in a tux."

He grins. "Thanks." He lets his right hand slide around her hip a little so that his fingertips are brushing the bare skin of her back. "You look amazing."

She takes a breath and looks up at him through her eyelashes. "You told me that earlier," she says softly. If he didn't know her so well, he'd think she was playing coy, but he's pretty sure that this - whatever this is - is real.

"It's true, San." She has that look in her eye that she gets just before she kisses him, but he knows that she won't do that here.

(He wishes, a little, that she could. It's not the first time that he's wanted to kiss her somewhere that he shouldn't.)

"So, is it better for you this time around?" Santana asks.

Finn grins. "Well, this time last year I'd been thrown out for trying to punch a douche in face. So, yeah. This year is better. You?"

"Yeah. Coming with Puck was a good idea." Finn moves his hand on her back so he can touch more of her skin, taking half a step closer to her body. "Finn."

"No one's paying attention," he assures her. And he's pretty sure that's true. Besides, if anyone is paying attention, as far as they know, he's just dancing with his friend. There's nothing wrong with touching her back.

Rachel comes up to them after the song changes, smiling when Finn winks at her. He puts his left hand on Rachel's waist, though he doesn't take his right off Santana. The girls share a look that he can't read, the sort of look that would have made him fear for his life (or his balls) six months ago. "What's going on?" he asks warily, letting his hands fall to his sides.

"Santana and I have been talking for a couple of weeks," Rachel says. "Since your birthday." She pauses, pressing her lips together and looking at him like she doesn't know how to say whatever it is she's trying to say. She closes her eyes for a second, takes a deep breath, and then locks eyes with him. "We got a hotel room."

Finn blinks.

"For the three of us," Santana adds quietly, and she's watching him carefully when he looks at her.

"For the...are..." He trails off, looking between the two of them. "Seriously?"

Santana nods at the same time that Rachel takes his hand and squeezes it. He doesn't have any idea what to say right now, so he just swallows hard and reminds himself that he's standing in the middle of a crowd of people in the gym, so he can't grab them both by the hand and drag them out to his car.

"I'd like to have one more dance with you," Rachel says softly, squeezing his hand again. "But after that..."

She trails off, but the implication is clear. After this last dance with his girlfriend, Finn is going to a hotel room to have a threesome.

"What are you thinking?" Rachel asks when they're dancing. She's toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, which is kind of distracting, but he doesn't say anything because he likes the way it feels.

He takes a second to consider the question. "I'm kind of freaking out," he answers honestly. "But I really love you."

She smiles softly. "I love you, too. Why are you freaking out?"

"Because, like, I don't even know how this happened. And how can I even _do_ that?" And seriously, can he handle being with both of them at the same time? What if it messes everything up?

She watches him thoughtfully. "We don't have to if you don't want to," she says gently.

"I do want to. I guess I'm just nervous," he admits.

She stands up on her toes and presses her lips to his gently. "I'm nervous, too."

That, somehow, makes him feel better, knowing that he won't be the only person in the room who isn't entirely sure of himself. It's going to be what it's going to be, and there really isn't any point in getting all worked up about it before it even happens.

He doesn't know what Santana says to Puck or who he thinks she's leaving with, but she meets Finn and Rachel out at the car after he dances with Rachel that last time. He really wants to kiss her, the way she looks standing there, but they still aren't entirely alone, and they haven't spent this long keeping things behind closed doors just to let it all blow up in their faces now.

Apparently they're already checked into their room at the hotel that Rachel (or Santana, maybe) chose, because the three of them walk straight through the lobby to the elevators, the girls' shoes clicking on the tile floor. It's weird, but he's like, really aware of the fact that there are two sets of footsteps, two girls walking with him.

To go upstairs and have a threesome.

Yeah, he's a little fixated on it, but he's an eighteen-year-old guy with a beautiful girlfriend and a super-hot girl who he kisses, and they've masterminded a threesome. You'd be fixated on it too, okay?

Santana slips into the restroom when they first get to their room, and Finn completely misses her explanation of why, though Rachel nods at her in acknowledgment. He watches Rachel step out of her shoes, lining them up neatly beside the chest of drawers. "Are you sure about this?" he asks quietly, even though there's a voice in his head (it sounds an awful lot like Puck) telling him to keep his fucking mouth shut. He loves Rachel, and he cares about Santana, and he doesn't want either of them to do this if they don't really want to.

Rachel smiles and comes to stand in front of him, setting her hands on his chest and pushing them up over his shoulders under his tux jacket, prompting him to shrug out of it. "It was my idea, Finn. Once I talked to Santana about it..." She shrugs one shoulder delicately, leaning over to drape his jacket over the arm of the chair she's standing beside. "I want this for you, but I want it for myself, too."

He feels like he has to kiss her. (He feels that way about Rachel on a pretty regular basis, actually; he has since he first got to know her.) And maybe it's bad manners not to wait for Santana, but Rachel is in front of him, looking up at him with her eyes all big and soft, so he puts his hand on her shoulder, his thumb grazing her collarbone, and leans down to kiss her gently.

Rachel's fingers slip between the buttons on his shirt as she opens her mouth against his. It's a familiar move, the way that she leads him to take the lead sometimes, and he can feel the curve of her mouth when he slips his tongue past her lips, his free hand coming to rest at the small of her back so he can pull her body closer to his.

"I can't believe I ever thought you two were anything but sexy."

Finn starts a little at the sound of Santana's voice. Rachel's fingers curl into the front of his shirt, and Finn meets her eyes for a moment before turning to look at Santana, standing there in her black dress with her hair loose around her shoulders. "I don't...how does this work?" he asks, looking at Santana even though he knows that she hasn't ever been in this situation either.

"There aren't any rules," Rachel says softly, prompting him to look down at her again. She slips the first button of his shirt open. "It's about doing what feels good."

It's a familiar phrase by now, to the point that it almost makes him smile.

Rachel stands on her toes to press her lips to the underside of his jaw. "Kiss her, Finn," she murmurs against his skin.

It sounds like a request, and Finn can't think of a good reason not to do what Rachel asks, so he takes his hands off of her and moves to face Santana, slipping his arm around her so he can put his hand on the small of her back, his palm flat against her bare skin the way he wanted to touch her back at school. He takes a moment to look at her, to appreciate the way that her dress falls over her body and how much softer she looks when her hair is loose around her shoulders. "You-"

"Finn," she interrupts, shaking her head the tiniest bit and bringing her hand up to the side of his neck. She kisses him before he can say anything in response, nipping at his bottom lip before pressing her tongue into his mouth.

Finn has really tried not to compare Santana and Rachel through all of this, and especially not with the physical stuff. It just felt wrong. But now, with both of them in the same place at the same time, both kissing him, both waiting for _more_, he can't help it. Where Rachel is gentle but sure, prompting Finn to take the lead, Santana borders on aggressive and is most definitely the one in control right this second.

Santana breaks the kiss, leaning away from him when he chases her lips. "Take off her dress," she whispers, undoing the second button on his shirt before taking her hands off him.

This thing they're doing where they tell him what to do? It's kind of hot.

He can see the flush on Rachel's chest above the neckline of her dress, partially hidden by the fall of her hair. He traces the tip of his finger over the center of her chest, then up along the narrow strap of her dress before kissing her again, his other hand moving up her back until he can grasp the tiny pull of her zipper and slide it slowly down to where it stops at the small of her back. She whimpers into his mouth when he puts his hand on her skin, sliding it upwards until it's flat between her shoulder blades and he can keep her pressed against him.

Finn gasps into Rachel's mouth when he feels Santana press herself against his back. "I said take it off," she mutters in his ear, the tip of her tongue tracing the shell of it while her hands move down over his chest to undo another button on his shirt.

Rachel's dress makes a sort of swishing noise when he slips the straps down her arms and it falls to her feet, leaving her in front of him in nothing more than a pair of hot pink lace panties. He can see Santana's hands unbuttoning his shirt slowly when he looks down at Rachel's body. It makes this thing that they're doing feel more real, and if he grips Rachel's hips a little too tight, it's because the whole thing makes him kind of crazy.

Santana slips his shirt from his shoulders once she gets it unbuttoned, working quickly to tug his undershirt over his head so there's something like fairness between he and Rachel. He just moves with it when Santana puts her hands on his back and pushes him forward, towards Rachel, so he can kiss her while he brings his hands up to her breasts. She whimpers into his mouth when he swipes the pads of his thumbs over her nipples, teasing, a sound that he never gets tired of, no matter how many times he hears it.

"Wait," she gasps when he's kissing along her collarbone. He pulls back to look at her, rolling her nipple gently between his thumb and forefinger until he sees her eyelashes flutter. "Santana," she breathes, looking over his shoulder for a moment before meeting his eyes.

He turns just in time to see Santana's dress hit the floor, leaving her standing there in absolutely nothing. She shrugs one shoulder when he looks at her with wide eyes. "I didn't want any lines."

Rachel makes a noise behind him that he thinks is a laugh, and Finn realizes something really, really important: If he lets himself think about what's happening - the fact that he's standing in a hotel room with two gorgeous girls who he cares about more than just about anyone else, both of whom are planning on having sex with him within the next hour or so - he's going to lose his shit. Not to mention the fact that these two girls have been fucking amazing to him, letting him be with both of them the way that they have without any of the jealousy or the games that they could have been playing.

This should be all about them, not him, even if it is something that they apparently wanted to do for him.

So he isn't going to think about it. He's just going to do what feels good, what makes _them_ feel good, and think about it later when it's all over.

He palms Santana's ass when he kisses her, pulling her against his body. She makes a noise that he knows she doesn't mean to make when he nips at her bottom lip, and he can feel her nipples, hard against his chest, when she rises up on her toes to get more of him. She nips her way up his jaw until she's tugging gently at his earlobe with her teeth. "I'm going to tell you what to do, okay?" she murmurs, pulling back and looking at him pointedly when he doesn't respond, waiting for his nod. She presses a kiss to his collarbone then before licking a stripe up the side of his neck. "You're going to lay Rachel on the bed, take off her panties, and touch her."

Finn groans, his fingertips digging into her ass for a moment before he steps away from her to do what she said. It's a little bossy, sure, but it's not like he has any idea what to do on his own in this situation. He doesn't have any reason not to follow Santana's instructions.

He bands his arm around Rachel's waist when he kisses her, walking her back to the bed and laying her down in a move that he's done enough times that it's one of those things he can do without feeling totally clumsy and awkward. She makes a noise against his mouth when he hooks his thumbs in the sides of her panties and tugs them down. He thinks about asking her again if she's really okay with this, if she's really ready to do this with Santana here, but her fingers circle his wrist, pushing his hand between her legs, and he figures that if she had any problem with it, she'd be stopping him instead of urging him on.

She mewls his name when he runs his fingers over her, circling her clit with the tip of his finger before dipping down to bring some of her wetness up. Her back arches when he slides two fingers on either side of her nerves, and her grip on his wrist tightens, guiding him down so he'll slip two fingers into her the way he knows she loves.

Finn's so fucking hard right now that it almost hurts, and he's trying not to let himself think about it, focusing instead on the way Rachel's mouth opens as she sucks in a breath of air.

But then he feels the bed dip behind him, and it reminds him that Santana's there too, and she's naked, and this is actually going to happen. He presses himself against Rachel's thigh, groaning against her neck and resisting the urge to sink his teeth into her flesh when Santana slides her hand across his back.

"Doesn't he have good hands?" Santana asks Rachel, her voice low. She's leaning over Finn's shoulder, her tits pressed against his back in a way that's super distracting.

He swipes his thumb over Rachel's nerves right when she opens her mouth to answer, just to watch her eyelashes flutter the way he knows they will. "So good."

Santana lets out a hum, her lips against Finn's shoulder as she feathers kisses over his skin. "Can you come just from this?" she asks.

Rachel's hips arch up when he circles his thumb against her clit again, her fingernails digging into his skin as she grips his wrist. "Yes. _God_," she whimpers when he slips a third finger into her, hooking them forward. "Finn, please."

He's been here before enough times that he knows what she's asking for without her having to say, so he kisses her, stroking her tongue with his while he thumbs her clit hard and twists his fingers. It always, always works, and she pulls her mouth from his when she comes, crying out when she clenches around his fingers.

Finn is kissing Rachel when he hears Santana murmur, "Fuck, that was hot."

Rachel moans against his lips before setting her hands on his shoulders and pushing him away gently.

Then Santana is setting her hand on the middle of his chest and pushing him onto his back so she can straddle his hips. Rachel is still breathing hard beside them, but Santana flips her hair over one shoulder before leaning down to kiss him, her tongue sliding past his teeth to graze the roof of his mouth, one of those things that demands all of his attention in that moment. She has one hand braced against the mattress above his shoulder while the other pushes into his hair, her thumb teasing along the shell of his his ear.

It's one thing for the girls to tell him what to do to each other, but if he lets Santana take control right now - which he can tell she wants to do, the way she's grinding her pussy against his stomach just above the waistband of his pants - he's going to come, and then he's going to be completely worthless to both of them.

With that in mind, he flips them so Santana's beneath him, pinning her hands above her head and sitting back on her thighs so she can't do much more than squirm. She arches her body towards his, letting out this sexy as hell breath. Finn leans down to graze his teeth over her throat just to hear her whimper, smirking at her when she doesn't disappoint. "Fuck. _Finn_."

He shifts, holding both of Santana's wrists in one hand so he can reach over with the other to push Rachel's hair behind her ear when she props herself up on her side to look at them. "You okay?" he asks.

She nods, leaning her head into his hand a little, her eyes moving to take in the way that he and Santana look, he guesses. Her cheeks are a pretty shade of pink, though he isn't sure if it's the lingering effects of her orgasm or because of what she sees right now. Finn doesn't care why; he likes it. She meets his eyes after a moment, then swallows hard. "Go down on her," she murmurs quietly.

Santana moans loudly beneath him, struggling a little to pull her hands free, but Finn keeps his eyes on Rachel. "Yeah?"

Her eyes dart downwards again before meeting his, and she nods. "I want to watch," she admits.

"Oh, fuck," Santana whimpers. Her eyes are dark when he looks down at her, and he knows she's totally desperate for him to do something - anything - for her. He figures she's been waiting long enough, so he doesn't bother teasing her. He moves down her body, pausing only to swipe his tongue over her nipple before he drops one arm over her hips and hooks the other under her thigh. He doesn't waste any time taking a long, slow lick up her center. And yeah, he can't help grinning a little when he hears the noise that comes out of the back of her throat when she threads her fingers into his hair.

She's as wet as he's ever seen her, which doesn't really surprise him at all. This thing they're doing, the three of them? It's like, borderline terrifying. There were - are - so many ways that it could all go horribly wrong. Except it's also the hottest thing _ever_, and it makes sense that Santana's just as turned on by it as he is.

And he really, really is. He's still really trying not to be distracted by how hard he is. Like, that's part of the reason that he's still wearing his pants. But he has to grind his hips into the mattress to get some relief when he grazes his teeth against Santana's clit, just the way that he knows will make her come. She practically screams his name, and he hears Rachel say something, and when he looks up Santana's body, he sees that Rachel's hand is sliding across Santana's stomach, her thumb just grazing the underside of one of Santana's tits.

It's literally the sexiest thing he's ever seen.

He needs for Santana to come right _now_, because even though he really, really needs someone to be touching him, he isn't going to let that happen until she falls apart.

On the plus side, he knows exactly how to make that happen.

He pushes two fingers into her without warning, fast and a little rough, at the same time as he sucks hard at her clit. Her hips jerk hard, and the hand she has in his hair tightens to the point that it hurts. He curls the fingers he has inside her, stroking rhythmically against her spot while he alternates between sucking at her clit and flicking his tongue against it, and the whole combination has her muscles clenching around him in just a few seconds, her thighs clamping against the sides of his head when her whole body goes rigid.

And the sound that she lets out? It's something like a wail and a moan that could be his name, but it sounds good enough that Finn doesn't really care if she's saying actual words or not. It's sexy as fuck.

The way that she turns her head away from him when he moves up her body to kiss her is really confusing though. She always wants to kiss him after he goes down on her. He asked once if it was a bi thing, which made her laugh and call him a dumbass before she slid down his body and returned the favor.

"Kiss her," she pants, nodding her head towards Rachel when he looks at her questioningly. "Fuck her."

"_Oh_."

He still presses his lips to Santana's for a moment, just gently, before moving off her to get on his knees in front of where Rachel is kneeling on the mattress. He locks eyes with her, asking the question without saying any words. If she doesn't want to kiss him when he just had his mouth...well, where he had it, he isn't going to make her. But then she takes a deep breath and sits up on her knees, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck as she presses herself against his chest and kisses him hard. She makes a noise in the back of her throat when she slides her tongue against his, and the idea that she's tasting Santana there...

_Fuck_.

"Rachel, I can't," he pants, pulling away from her. He looks down at her pleadingly, watching her huge, dark eyes. "I _need_ to fuck you," he insists.

He isn't usually quite so crude with Rachel, but she doesn't seem to care. She nods almost frantically, her hands dropping to unbutton his pants. He grabs her wrists and pushes her away when her hands graze against his cock, because he really needs like, three seconds to get control of himself. It would suck a lot to get this far and then come before he even gets inside one of his girls. He's not going to let this go down like that.

He stands next to the bed to push his pants off his hips with his boxers, taking his dick in his hand and squeezing hard at the base in an effort to calm the fuck down. It would be easier if Santana wasn't laying there on the bed with her skin covered in sweat, next to Rachel, who is on her knees and unwrapping a condom, her gaze focused on where his hand is on his dick.

Longevity isn't happening at all. He just needs for her to come before he does. Goals are good though; they give him something concrete to work towards. As long as Rachel comes before he does, he's going to call this thing a success, at least for tonight.

"I want to kiss you."

Finn gapes when he realizes that the words are coming from Santana, and she's looking at Rachel. She's sitting on her knees, facing Rachel, and pushing her hair off her shoulders. Rachel is just staring back at her with wide eyes.

"I just...want to kiss you," Santana repeats after a second.

Rachel glances at Finn for just a second, and then he sees her take a breath. "Okay."

He's back to doing that thing where's he's fixated on what's happening in front of him even though he can't really believe it, but Rachel's tongue is darting out to wet her lips, and Santana's setting one hand on Rachel's waist as she leans in and brushes their lips together. It starts out all gentle and barely there, but then Rachel's mouth is opening, and he can definitely see tongue, and even though this isn't the first time he's seen two girls kiss, this is most definitely the best. It's _Santana_ and _Rachel_ and...they're _together_ and-

_Fuck._

He doesn't mean to say it out loud, and he doesn't even realize that he has until the girls pull apart and look at him. Santana's smirking, but she doesn't make any sort of comment, though she does slowly slide the hand that she has on Rachel's waist around to her back and down over her ass before moving to lie on the opposite side of the bed again.

"Finn, please."

Rachel's words come out as a whisper, but it still sounds like she's pleading with him. That sounds - just like nearly every other either girl has made tonight - goes straight to his cock, and it propels him forward without him even having to think about it.

He slides his fingers over her pussy as soon as she lays back against the pillows, groaning when he feels how wet she still is. He can tell that she's surprised, but he needs for her to be as close to the edge as he can get her before he's inside her. He has way more control of himself than he used to, but he doesn't trust himself to last, not tonight.

"Finn." She leans up to nip at his lips, rolling the condom down over his length carefully, the same way she always does. Her back arches when he pinches her clit gently. "Now," she gasps. "Please."

He can't wait any more. He doesn't want to.

The way it feels when he finally pushes into her...Rachel could probably come up with some really smart metaphor to describe it, but all Finn can think is that it's just really, really _good_.

It doesn't last long, and it isn't anything super crazy, though at one point, Finn looks away from Rachel's face - which is all blown pupils and swollen lips and pink cheeks - to see Santana's hand between her thighs, her fingers shiny with her own wetness and her eyes trained on where his hips are connected to Rachel's. He doesn't think he'll ever forget that moment, or the one right after, when Rachel falls apart, chanting his name, her orgasm dragging him over the edge because he can finally (_finally_) stop holding himself back. His vision goes kind of red, but he can hear Santana cry out when she comes.

He doesn't know how long they all lie there, sweat drying on their skin while they catch their collective breath. Finn doesn't know what's supposed to happen now, but he hopes it isn't much of anything, because he's kind of done. He's more than happy to just lie here in silence until they fall asleep and worry about what all of this means in the morning.

"What now?"

Rachel is the one to break the silence, not surprisingly. Finn doesn't have an answer for her; he'd really just like to go to sleep.

"Do you have a curfew?" Santana asks, saving him from having to say anything. She shrugs her shoulders when both Finn and Rachel shake their heads. "Let's just go to sleep."

So they do.


End file.
